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: start by adding more 'humane' directory names
by elsewhere on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 18:47
in reply to "start by adding more 'humane' directory names"
Member since:2005-07-13
So, /etc could have the 'humane' name '/settings' or '/system settings'.
But how does that improve the situation for non-English speaking users? Seems to me it only makes it worse for them, or we have to use some sort of an abstraction layer on top of FHS for language-specific directory names.
All of this talk about human-readable directory names seems to imply that linux users should all learn English, in order to simplify things for English speaking users.
RE[2]: start by adding more 'humane' directory names
by Thom_Holwerda on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 19:08
in reply to "RE: start by adding more 'humane' directory names"
Member since:2005-06-29
All of this talk about human-readable directory names seems to imply that linux users should all learn English, in order to simplify things for English speaking users.
Why?
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. Heck, even non-Latin alphabets could be used. It'd be a massive improvement in localisation.
Yet another advantage.
Edited 2008-08-23 19:09 UTC
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Member since:
2006-01-01
If there were an attribute for 'humane' directory names associates with existing directory names that would be a good start at bridging the gap between the FHS and notice users.
So, /etc could have the 'humane' name '/settings' or '/system settings'.
Such a surgical change would be fairly straight forward to implement (especially if it was limited to the GUI) without the hacks gobo has to employ.