OSNews is Exploring the Future of Computing

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 15:37 UTC

Earlier this week, we ran a story on GoboLinux, and the distribution's effort to replace the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard with a more pleasant, human-readable, and logical design. A lot of people liked the idea of modernising/replacing the FHS, but just as many people were against doing so. Valid arguments were presented both ways, but in this article, I would like to focus on a common sentiment that came forward in that discussion: normal users shouldn't see the FHS, and advanced users are smart enough to figure out how the FHS works.

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RE[3]: start by adding more 'humane' directory names

by irbis on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 22:03 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: start by adding more 'humane' directory names"

Member since:
2005-07-08

As soon as you have a set of standard human-readable names, translation only gets easier - not harder. How on earth do you translate /usr? Or /etc? Compare that to /settings. Or /programs. Or /system. The desktop environment and cli can easily be aware of the locale and language settings and change the names displayed accordingly.

Well, if translation is needed, and let's say your locale was English, couldn't you as well translate /usr as /programs and /etc as /settings etc. too - if you want intuitive file hierarchy system? Just a thought.

Unix and Linux file hierarchy system with its /etc, /usr, /dev etc. can indeed look cryptic. at least if you are not an experienced user yet. But at least /etc and /usr etc. are short which can be a big plus if you want to see full paths to files and use commandline a lot.

Having said that, I do like the Gobo Linux ideas like its file hierarchy system and have often considered that I would like to give that distro a try.

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