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  • From: Sukneet Basuta <sukneet AT gmail.com>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] /usr merge
  • Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 23:46:29 -0500

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 9:58 PM, flux <flux AT sourcemage.org> wrote:
> The merged /usr proponents claim that historical partitioning is purely
> arbitrary and no longer needed, yet a merged /usr (as opposed to merged
> /, etc.) is also an arbitrary choice. In fact, merging everything to /
> would produce less breakage of existing systems, since / is certainly
> needed on all systems before /usr is, so pushing to / wouldn't break
> existing boot setups.

Their argument to that is "This would make the separation between
vendor-supplied OS resources and machine-specific even worse, thus
making OS snapshots and network/container sharing of it much harder
and non-atomic, and clutter the root file system with a multitude of
new directories." I can't say I agree with them, minus the latter
point, since it seems to me that a /usr merge would have the same
affect. They also state that the SYS V and Solaris standard is to have
/bin as a symlink to /usr/bin. Since when has it mattered what Solaris
and SYS V do?

I have to admit that I do like that will simplify the filesystem. For
Desktop users like me that have /usr on the same partition as /, there
is not many advantages to having /bin and /usr/bin separate.

> The push for a merged /usr is purely arbitrary. I can't recall its name
> now, but there was a distro that tried to put every package in its own
> directory, much like how programs install themselves under "Program
> Files" in Windows. Having a merged /usr (pushing every bin into one
> directory) would be just as arbitrary as completely separating every
> package.

I don't agree with that point, but you are thinking of GoboLinux. The
Nix package manager also does something similar.

Anyone know if Debian is adopting this change? I can't see them supporting it.




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