title: Distributing binary applications across linux distros
body: <p>I've written an application which as of yet is not open source and I'd like to distribute the executable across various linux distros. What's the best way to do this, I've looked a little bit at .rpm and .deb packaging but I can't find if that can be used for binaries or not. Ideally I'd like something like the PackageMaker on OS X or a regular installer on windows that will have it automatically copy into /usr/bin. Is that what .rpm and .deb packages are for or do I have to bundle a shell script that will do it automatically?</p>