Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem!

[Zac Medico]

On 03/14/2012 01:03 PM, Richard Yao wrote:
> On 03/14/12 14:56, Zac Medico wrote:
>> On 03/14/2012 11:36 AM, Maxim Kammerer wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 19:58, Matthew Summers
>>> <quantumsummers@g.o> wrote:
>>>> Why is an in-kernel initramfs so bad anyway? I am baffled. Its quite
>>>> nice to have a minimal recovery env in case mounting fails, etc, etc,
>>>> etc.
>>>
>>> There is nothing bad about initramfs. I think that you are misreading
>>> the arguments above.
>>
>> Whatever the arguments may be, the whole discussion boils down to the
>> fact that the only people who seem to have a "problem" are those that
>> have a separate /usr partition and simultaneously refuse to use an
>> initramfs.
>
> I do not have a separate /usr partition, however I agree with Joshua
> Kinard's stance regarding the /usr move. The point of having a separate
> /usr was to enable UNIX to exceed the space constraints that a 1.5MB
> hard disk placed on rootfs. As far as I know, we do not support a 1.5MB
> rootfs so it would make sense to deprecate the practice of having things
> that belong in / in /usr directory, as opposed to making /usr into a new /.
>
> Deprecation of this practice would mean that people could type
> /bin/command instead of /usr/bin/command in situations where absolute
> paths are necessary. We could symlink things in /usr to rootfs for
> compatibility with legacy software. In a more extreme case, we could
> symlink /usr to /, which would make plenty of sense given that we do not
> need a separate /usr at all.

I'm not seeing any compelling benefits here that would justify a lack of
conformity with other *nix distros. It seems almost as though it's an
attempt to be different for the sake of being different, perhaps a
symptom of something like NIH syndrome.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac