zlacker

>>taubek+(OP)
I once sent out a proposal on the FreeBSD lists to merge /sbin with /bin, and /usr/sbin with /usr/bin. People were concerned that this would slow down the system, due to PATH lookups taking longer. Even when I demonstrated the opposite was true (it being faster due to fewer directories needing to be scanned), I wasn't able to get consensus. What a shame.

>>EdScho+Oa
> What a shame.

I think this is a pretty dangerous attitude, and it is really the only thing wrong with Linux, and probably leads to replacement of simple structure and functionality with a complex software suite that is merely more convenient, like systemd. "Let's change this thing because we want to, because it will improve performance 0.0024%"

Feature creep is what happens when restraint was not exercised.

IMO, since it really doesn't matter what the filesystem looks like, leave it be for standards and compatibility. Seriously, it takes, idk, maybe, a lack of humility to want to change fundamental characteristics of UNIX when the reasons for doing so are a little capricious.

I'm not really talking about the parent, fwiw. I'm talking about the crowd and ochlocracy.

>>Maursa+De
It's also dangerous and tiring the opposite attitude in the Linux world: don't dare change something that has been there for 30 years. Like this very article, there were plenty saying "the /usr split is there for a reason!". No, it's just an historical quirk.

There's plenty greybeards that for them "Linux" is a full screen terminal running emacs on decade-old hardware. "I don't use antialiased fonts, why the hell should I care about decent HiDPI support?" And then protest every time some working group tries to modernise and improve the Linux desktop. You see them every time on this forum.

I'm a greybeard, I've used Linux full time on the desktop for 20 years. I don't get this conservative, "we don't need it" attitude.

>>sph+ug
> "the /usr split is there for a reason!". No, it's just an historical quirk.

It's a historical quirk on linux, where there is no clear separation between "base OS packages" and "3rd party packages".

On FreeBSD the split is very real, anything in /bin/ ships with my OS and is maintained and updated by the FreeBSD team. Anything in /usr/bin/ comes from ports and is thus a 3rd party package I installed and can be safely nuked and I need to maintain/update it.

>>merijn+Yi
The split is even stronger on NetBSD, where /usr is the base OS and /usr/pkg what's installed by the user through pkgin (binary packages) or pkgsrc (ports).

Likewise, the system configuration goes to /etc while the userland configuration goes to /usr/pkg/etc.

All it takes to factory reset a NetBSD system is an rm -Rf /usr/pkg.