On 2012-03-28 20:29, Mike Edenfield wrote:

> I was particularly interested to find out that Solaris started merging / and
> /usr 15 years ago, so in reality, the "true UNIX way" that Linux is
> following has long since been abandoned by UNIX :)

Yep, next up is transitioning to a more modern handling of device naming
(starts with c:). I certainly hope they can persuade all the other UNIX
vendors in this, one true way(tm)! And certainly the *BSD must be forced
to follow suit... Come to think of it, why not scrap all operating
systems except the one and only "Lord of the OS"? :-|

The true UNIX way is that there is no "true UNIX way"... Solaris is no
more UNIX than AIX or HP-UX or even BSD (which Solaris is based on).
There's only a poor way of doing things and a good way of doing things
(guess which way I think Linux is going). There's a lot of talk like so:
"I think this therefore it must be the best way". _Noone_ has
rationalised _why_ this change has to happen except: "Oh, my bluetooth
keyboard doesn't work during boot, therefore everyone has to suffer" or
"a modern desktop requires this" (without explaining why a modern
desktop requires could be considered "hand waving" - for the record, I
consider my desktop quite modern with the exception of "whistles and
bells" but I wouldn't want to force going without on anyone).
All this talk about different directories is a matter of "taste"; there
is no technical reason (shared libraries aside) that some tools should
be in a directory (named after whatever); it's just a matter of
organisation and I happen to be on the side which thinks the FHS
rationalisation for /bin, /sbin, /lib is a neat one. Others thinks the
neatest solution is to put everything into one directory (whatever that
may be) and that's fine too, if there was a choice...

As for what Neil Bothwick said:
>According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red
>Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others
>are not.

Redhat are in control (maintaining or main contributor) of a whole lot
of core software:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#Upstream_Focus

So maybe it's in their (Redhats) best interest to only support their way
of doing things? Or it may be that the devs themselves are so "tight"
that they are working in this direction on their own accord. Or maybe
it's all coincidental... But the facts remain and that is that the Linux
"landscape" are changing dramatically (for the worse from my point of view).

This is only speculation of course but I see the software (systemd,
udev, avahi, dbus, glib, gtk+, pulseaudio etc.) Redhat support/maintain
interlinking with each other, creating ever growing dependencies (not
very "UNIXy" in my opinion); I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few years,
the (abomination) Gnome desktop system would be a hard dependency for
running a Linux system...
Or maybe Oracle (Solaris) is behind all this with their Gnome derived
JDS? Oh, the gnomes are out to get me! ;-)

A little bit more on topic perhaps: An initrd is a redundancy in my
point of view; a hassle that is needed by binary distributions with
modules for everything from the moon to the sun. It's yet another step
that is needed to restore what once was without gaining _anything_ for
it... (I don't use modules for devices that should be available during
boot).

Best regards

Peter K