where the installed programs are actually stored? [closed]

Question

I have a confusion always , whether installed programs are stored in hard disk or in RAM ?

Can anyone explain me ?

Answer 1

1) as an answer:

The programs are stored on the disk (or other permanent storage. It does not need to be a disk, it can be on a network or any other place such as a ROM).

When you start a program the parts of it which are needed are loaded into the main memory (the RAM). This does not even need to be the whole program, just the pages needed at the time.

And technically the programs do not even need to be in memory. E.g. at boot time a program called the BIOS is executed with the CPU's cache as storage. One of the first things it does it to configure the memory controller so that it has access to main memory. For more information about this exotic usage see the coreboot BIOS program which was explained nicely at FOSDEM 2010

2) Welcome to [SU]. This is a site for problems and practical answers. Your question does not seem to match this.

Answer 2

They are stored on the Harddisk. If you use them, they will be loaded in the RAM.

Path in Windows: C:/Programm Files Linux: /usr/share/applications/

Answer 3

Generally, computer programs (including the computer operating system) and stored for the long term on a persistent storage media, such as a magnetic hard drive, flash memory device, magnetic tape, or magnetic floppy disk.

This storage media is usually formatted using one of a variety of file systems, that provide for a logical way to keep the binary representations of these files (the 1's and 0's) in a retrievable format.

The files on contained within this file system are generally located in some sort of hierarchical directory tree structure so that files can be easily located and logically grouped together.

On a Windows system, the application's executable files are generally kept (by default) in C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86), but this could be changed by the user at install time. Programs may also store information in C:\ProgramData (Windows 7) and may also store information in one of the profile folders under C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData, but this varies based on the implementation by the software vendor.

Linux systems generally follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard on where the application, once installed, places files. This, however, depends greatly on whether the developer of the software follows these conventions and whether or not the end user made modifications to the installation process to change where these files are to be located.

Once executed, the installed programs generally execute operations in RAM, though they still exist on the long term storage medium unless otherwise removed.

All this information can be easily Googled, really.