Hello, I have read the discussion about using /opt with some amusement, my opinion is like tha majority: Stay away from /opt for official debian packages. But:
To have a simple solution for testing kde3 beta besides kde2 wouldn't it be good to provide "unofficial" debs for kde3 as long as this is called beta upstream. These unofficial packages are not part of debian and can use /opt ! This way it should be possible to have both at the same time. When kde3 matures the packages become official and replace the kde2 packages under/usr (if this isnt too much work changing the prefix in all relevant packages?) Just my 2 cent, Olaf