Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Joshua Kinard <kumba@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem!
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:41:38
Message-Id: 4F6091CE.1050009@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem! [was newsitem: unmasking udev-181] by Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>
1 On 03/14/2012 04:39, Duncan wrote:
2
3 >
4 > THAT is why they're moving /bin, /sbin and /lib to /usr rather than the
5 > other direction. rootfs will be ONLY a mountpoint, with even /etc/ being
6 > bind-mounted from /usr/etc, and all system data unified on /usr,
7 > including /etc.
8 >
9 > Viewed from that perspective, the direction of the "unification",
10 > everything formerly on rootfs moving to /usr, so rootfs' only function is
11 > providing the mountpoints for everything else, has a certain logic to
12 > it...
13
14
15 From one perspective, this makes sense. It actually is a kinda of holy
16 grail for administrators, because it's one less filesystem to worry about
17 backing up.
18
19
20 > And they don't care about non-initr* based systems any more than they
21 > care about non-Linux systems or for that matter, non-systemd Linux
22 > systems. That's outside their operational universe. Other people are
23 > welcome to continue working with "legacy" systems if they want, but Linux-
24 > only, systemd-based, initr*-based systems are the only thing they're
25 > interested in supporting, themselves.
26
27
28 You know, I would have no problem with this if it wasn't a decision made by
29 a single Linux distro with a huge amount of clout in the Linux world. This
30 isn't like Debian forking Firefox into Ice Weasel, an issue that largely
31 remains Debian-specific to this day. This is a change that will
32 fundamentally alter the way every distro does things, and none of us (as far
33 as I know) were given a choice in the matter.
34
35 The /usr move is going to happen. I, along with a lot of other people, are
36 going to have to "fix" all my installed systems over this. Not because of a
37 choice made by all distros, but because one distro thinks that its way is
38 the RightWay() and the OnlyWay().
39
40 That's what I disagree with. We shouldn't be affected by this change. Only
41 Fedora users should have to deal with it. But other upstream projects are
42 going to follow in Fedora's lead, and this brings us up to a decision point:
43 adapt, or become irrelevant.
44
45 I chose to stick with Gentoo as my distro of choice because I didn't like
46 the way Red Hat did things years ago. As well as a few other nitpicks I
47 have. It bugs me to no end that, despite running a fairly vanilla setup on
48 a source-based distro whose original inspiration came from BSD ports, I am
49 still affected by a decision made by RH.
50
51 --
52 Joshua Kinard
53 Gentoo/MIPS
54 kumba@g.o
55 4096R/D25D95E3 2011-03-28
56
57 "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And
58 our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
59
60 --Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

Attachments

File name MIME type
signature.asc application/pgp-signature

Replies