I installed program from tar.gz as root in /opt. Now it treats /root/ as "home" directory. Did i make a mistake?

Question

I hate to have those loose software pieces in ~/somesoftware/version etc.. so i wanted to install it to /opt directory running some installer. Eclipse java ide is the particular program in question. I extracted the archive in ~/Downloads and ran installer with sudo.
It works i think but something feels very wrong here, my guts tell me because it treats /root/ as home.
Also i unchecked all 'add to start menu' and 'add to desktop' because i thought its like windows add to favourites or sth and now i cant find it in all programs and it won't run as a user from /opt? how do i uninstall this? Is deleting /opt/eclipse with rm -r enough? It doesnt have any uninstaller or anything i believe

Rinzwind · Accepted Answer

Is deleting /opt/eclipse with rm -r enough?

Yes.
Mind though that if there is an uninstaller in /opt/eclipse/ you should prefer using that over using rm. Those script are text files so you can examine what it does and it might also undo settings.

and it won't run as a user from /opt?

That depends. Generally there is 1 command in /opt/ that triggers ownership where you can copy to a location in your PATH or create a simlink to.
For eclipse you should start it from your user and never with sudo or as root. Check, and if not set, as rwx on user and set to your user these 2 locations:
 ~/workspace 
~/.eclipse

or change those inside Eclipse to point to your a directory in your home directory.

I installed program from tar.gz as root in /opt. Now it treats /root/ as "home" directory. Did i make a mistake?

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