Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th Aug 2008 23:33 UTC, submitted by Charles Wilson
GoboLinux is a distribution which sports a different file system structure than 'ordinary' Linux distributions. In order to remain compatible with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, symbolic links are used to map the GoboLinux tree to standard UNIX directories. A post in the GoboLinux forums suggested that it might be better to turn the concept around: retain the FHS, and then use symbolic links to map the GoboLinux tree on top of it. This sparked some interesting discussion. Read on for more details.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Since everyone is so offended that I want to install fonts in a place that I can remember easily, and can't be bothered to address the actual problem being illustrated, let's try another example from experience.
Distribution D naturally installs application A to some directory (/usr/share say). You want the more recent version (many distributions take a while to update certain software after all) so "yum erase A" or "apt-get erase A" or whatever, download the tarball from A.org, and run "./configure; make; make install". But for some mysterious reason A's system installs the software into /usr/local/share, not /usr/share. You spend a while trying to figure out why A claims to have installed without a complaint while giving you all kinds of file not found errors when you actually try to run it. Eventually you figure it out, or maybe you don't.
I suppose this is also an example of micromanagement on my part?
The article gives plenty other examples, like shell scripts breaking. Also micromanagement I suppose?