[nycbug-talk] Cool read about history of /bin /usr/bin/

[George Rosamond]

On 03/27/12 17:52, Chris Snyder wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Dan Cross<crossd at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> For an example of a system that largely did away with the "standard"
>> hierarchy, check out Plan 9 (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/);
>
> Or for a more amusing example, OS X.
>
> /Applications
> /Library
> /System
> /Users
> /private<--- unix-esque hierarchy hidden here :-)

That's make sense for a desktop operating system in which the 
'internals' are obscured from the users.

And I also think for default installs, I don't see how Ed's point matters.

Sure, there's lots of things you do in partitioning to tweak disk i/o 
and so on for specific purposes, but I don't see how proliferating lib 
dirs, etc., all of the sudden become principle for a default build.

I am reasonably confident I know where port/pkg libs reside on a *BSD 
box, where third party startup scripts are, and so on.  And a 
consistency, even if it's based on ancient history, is worth more than 
anything when trying to figure something out, providing frameworks for 
people porting new software, etc.

A web server might have /www, and so on.  But that doesn't mean /www 
should be in the default partitioning, whether or not your OS secretly 
installs a www server on your box or not by default.

g