Debian Votes To Reinstate Merged-/usr File Movement Moratorium

[darkoverlordofdata]

So, I guess I’ll answer my own question in my best Roseanne Roseannadanna fashion “Never Mind”.

There is a good article about this - https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2019/228/Debian-usr-Merge#:~:text=The%20%2Fusr%20merge%20aims%20to,int o%20one%20(Figure%201). The original mess is maintained via symbolic links. Debian is just a decade behind other Linux on this, being the only one to miss their deadline.

Go Debian!l

[discordian]

Merged /usr is a godsend if you want a immutable distribution image - just mount it into /usr. Done, no stoopid leftovers.

[jabl]

I didn't know /usr was really originally for user home directories. I thought it stood for UNIX System Resources.

I've heard "UNIX System Resources" before too so yes it's a thing, but it's a backronym. "usr" being a shorthand for "users" was there first.

Given the history, I'd be fine with drastically simplifying everything down to basically just /bin, /sbin, /lib, /etc, and /var . I guess a /include for development headers. And I would keep /opt or some other directory to store software which needs to be manually downloaded and installed.

The usecase is that having everything under /usr makes it really easy to do things like immutable (read-only) OS images. Just switch the /usr mountpoint to a new image and boom you have a newly upgraded system (I think you can even play some tricks with moving the new mount to make the replacement atomic).

And realistically, there's so much stuff that hardcodes /usr paths, so you can't just get rid of it. Just like we'll have to live with these /bin -> /usr/bin etc. symlinks. They're a lesser evil than breaking huge swathes of software just to clean up a couple of symlinks.

[iustinp]

I also find it very, very, very funny that the usr-merge can be seen as a meta hack. /usr was hacked together because they ran out of hard drive space. usr-merge is a hack to put everything within the hack. You'd think they'd want do it the other way around and merge usr back with the rest of the system.

I thought the same, but actually moving all "binaries" (whether libs or binaries is irrelevant) into `/usr` makes more sense. You get clear mountpoint that holds all binaries, and the root filesystem then can be very lightweight and hold just configuration. And `/var` holding mutable/runtime data, and `/home` user data. It - IMO - actually makes a clean split.

[petete]

I didn't know /usr was really originally for user home directories. I thought it stood for UNIX System Resources.

Given the history, I'd be fine with drastically simplifying everything down to basically just /bin, /sbin, /lib, /etc, and /var . I guess a /include for development headers. And I would keep /opt or some other directory to store software which needs to be manually downloaded and installed.

/sbin is redundant too. At least in arch /bin and /sbin both point to /usr/bin

[waxhead]

The worst part about all of this, the short and cryptographic directory names, the doubled and tripled up directories with the same names, etc...pun intended...is that it all comes down to 1960s computing limitations.

I also find it very, very, very funny that the usr-merge can be seen as a meta hack. /usr was hacked together because they ran out of hard drive space. usr-merge is a hack to put everything within the hack. You'd think they'd want do it the other way around and merge usr back with the rest of the system.

It'd be nice if the Linux FHS 4.0 started naming directories like GoboLinux does.

First of all I better describe that I am biased , personally I like the short names such as usr, prg, tmp, bin, etc.... if you actually type something on your computer this is far better than horrible constructs like "My documents" which of all things happen to have a space in the filename as well.

GoboLinux really do a few things right. At least in principle, but that is also just a hack on top of a hacks. In my opinion it creates a wonderfully clean and cluttelerless filesystem hierarchy at the expense of simply reversing the entire thing, e.g. more clutter in each program directory. What is better? I guess it all comes down to taste.

Another operating system that surprisingly did a lot of things right for it's time was the Amiga operating system. Simple and brilliant constructs such as ENV: and ENVARCH: was brilliant if you wanted to "try" out settings on several programs and how they interact without actually saving "the setup" until later. To this day I still do not understand how a lot of the brilliant solutions on the Amiga platform have not yet reached the PC world. It is a bit weird since we after all are just a bunch of little computer people(!) all of us.

[Delgarde]

Merged /usr is a godsend if you want a immutable distribution image - just mount it into /usr. Done, no stoopid leftovers.

And that's the key to it, yes. It's about not having _anything_ in the root file system... it just becomes a tmpfs with some directories in it for mounting other filesystems to, and some symlinks for compatibility. One mountpoint (/usr) for all application binaries and system content. One mountpoint (/var) for system state. One mountpoint (/etc) for persistent configuration... if you need it, and don't want to just reset to factory defaults on a reboot.

A lot of things become easier if you can say "system binaries are under /usr" instead of "system binaries are under /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64, and occasionally /libexec".

[darkdragon-001]

I didn't know /usr was really originally for user home directories. I thought it stood for UNIX System Resources.

Given the history, I'd be fine with drastically simplifying everything down to basically just /bin, /sbin, /lib, /etc, and /var . I guess a /include for development headers. And I would keep /opt or some other directory to store software which needs to be manually downloaded and installed.

I think it's a matter of perspective:
Users and applications should be looking for binaries in /bin.
Distros then have the freedom to either put binaries there directly or use a symlink to /usr/bin (e.g. for immutable OS mount).

[justinkb]

Laughs in NixOS. Only got /bin, with literally only one thing in it, a symlink to sh

[intelfx]

But why this change - all I hear as a reason is a history lesson. What happened to “if it ain't broke, don’t fix it”?

This was never a valid engineering principle. Don't listen to whoever told you this was a thing.