Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 30th Jan 2012 20:39 UTC
Finally something really interesting to talk about. If you've used UNIX or any of its derivatives, you've probably wondered why there's /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin in the file system. You may even have a rationalisation for the existence of each and every one of these directories. The thing is, though - all these rationalisations were thought up after these directories were created. As it turns out, the real reasoning is pretty damn straightforward.
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Member since:2010-06-15
I've answered this here: http://www.osnews.com/permalink?505180
But in case you also want to hear it from more official people: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMe...
It simply makes more sense to do it /usr, that way it is possible to contain everything of that nature onto its own separate file system that could then be snapshotted, shared and mounted however you need it. Symlinking /bin, /sbin, etc into /usr gives you additional compatibility as a freebie since everything will exist in both locations.
Member since:2010-06-08
RE[2]: About time...
by Bill Shooter of Bul on Mon 30th Jan 2012 22:44
in reply to "RE: About time..."
Member since:2006-07-14
That was my thought as well, and It was answered pretty well in the wiki faq linked above a couple of days ago. Apparently, someone changed the explanation.
The old explanation was that everyone else that had fixed this issue had moved everything into /usr, so to be compatible with all of them (mostly solaris), they were going to follow suite.
That made sense to me.
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Member since:
2010-06-08
So why to /usr/bin and not to /bin then?