Urgh, that's what get trying to write a comment through an app (and sadly edit time window is gone). Anyway, the `local` does. It is a manually managed sub-hierarchy, compared to rest being system managed. So `/bin` and `/usr/bin` will have executables managed through a package manager whereas `/local/bin` is were admin will put executables by themselves to be accessible by all users. Also, it's were `make install` will put its builds by default. Systemd provides a per-user similar hierarchy in `~/.local`, which has a `~/.local/bin` directory.

I am aware of its usage, but switched to installing things into separate folders in /opt many years ago. That way, it’s easy to uninstall stuff (rm the right subfolder), and you can install apps that don’t follow the Unix conventions into the same place (e.g. Matlab).

You’re right though, I haven’t seen any mainstream distributions (i.e. no GoboLinux) that removes /usr/local.