I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are stored.
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Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#12I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are stored.
The story went something like, the guys building UNIX got a second hard drive, so they moved the home directories (/usr) to it. As the system grew, they started dropping more binaries into /usr/bin (while trying to keep /bin for things needed to boot/rescue the system, in case the disk with /usr failed). The rest is history.
And to this day there is a mysterious 'bin' user on Linux systems that no one seems to use or know the purpose of.
I wonder if another UNIX at some point added such a user in order to reserve '/usr/bin'...
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#13The equivalent for Haiku OS, without decades of legacy, conflicts, changes, history, backwards compatibility: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/filesystem-layout... This shows you what Linux could be if it were redesigned from scratch without layers of patches/fixes. Nice, simple, and due to dynamically mounted read only package system, read-only actually means read only.
> "The home folder - /boot/home/"
What relationship is there between home folders and the boot process?
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#14The equivalent for Haiku OS, without decades of legacy, conflicts, changes, history, backwards compatibility: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/filesystem-layout... This shows you what Linux could be if it were redesigned from scratch without layers of patches/fixes. Nice, simple, and due to dynamically mounted read only package system, read-only actually means read only.
With a proper redesign from scratch, it could have the same success and market share Haiku has.
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#15complementary openbsd resource: https://man.openbsd.org/hier some differences: * openbsd does not use a /boot/ partition. instead it uses the bsd.* files in root. * no /proc/ in its entirety in openbsd. use sysctl(3) instead. * current openbsd does not have a separate /var/tmp/; it is a symbolic link to /tmp/.
The /proc equivalent in OpenBSD is ptrace(2).
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#16The equivalent for Haiku OS, without decades of legacy, conflicts, changes, history, backwards compatibility: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/filesystem-layout... This shows you what Linux could be if it were redesigned from scratch without layers of patches/fixes. Nice, simple, and due to dynamically mounted read only package system, read-only actually means read only.
With a proper redesign from scratch, it could have the same success and market share Haiku has.
Right, without back-compat, any system trying to gain marketshare is domed.
...but Linux has chroot, symlinks, hardlinks, and everything in-between - it's entirely possible to design a Linux environment where the clutter and warts of back-compat are only visible to the users and programs that need to see them.
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#17The equivalent for Haiku OS, without decades of legacy, conflicts, changes, history, backwards compatibility: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/filesystem-layout... This shows you what Linux could be if it were redesigned from scratch without layers of patches/fixes. Nice, simple, and due to dynamically mounted read only package system, read-only actually means read only.
> "The home folder - /boot/home/" What relationship is there between home folders and the boot process?
It says it's the boot volume, not necessarily the equivalent I guess of /boot on Linux where it's exclusively for boot related things.
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
The story went something like, the guys building UNIX got a second hard drive, so they moved the home directories (/usr) to it. As the system grew, they started dropping more binaries into /usr/bin (while trying to keep /bin for things needed to boot/rescue the system, in case the disk with /usr failed). The rest is history.
And to this day there is a mysterious 'bin' user on Linux systems that no one seems to use or know the purpose of. I wonder if another UNIX at some point added such a user in order to reserve '/usr/bin'...
[deleted]
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#19complementary openbsd resource: https://man.openbsd.org/hier some differences: * openbsd does not use a /boot/ partition. instead it uses the bsd.* files in root. * no /proc/ in its entirety in openbsd. use sysctl(3) instead. * current openbsd does not have a separate /var/tmp/; it is a symbolic link to /tmp/.
The /proc equivalent in OpenBSD is ptrace(2).
Could you elaborate? To me there seems extremely little overlap there (I'm familiar with both the procfs and linux's ptrace APIs, but not OpenBSD's ptrace).
Re: Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (2004)
#20The equivalent for Haiku OS, without decades of legacy, conflicts, changes, history, backwards compatibility: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/filesystem-layout... This shows you what Linux could be if it were redesigned from scratch without layers of patches/fixes. Nice, simple, and due to dynamically mounted read only package system, read-only actually means read only.
> "The home folder - /boot/home/" What relationship is there between home folders and the boot process?
These are folders on the boot drive, which is always mounted on /boot?