On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 11:10 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:16:05 +0200 > nunojsi...@ist.utl.pt (Nuno J. Silva) wrote: > > > On 2012-12-14, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > > > I guess the other question that's lurking here for me is why do you > > > have /usr on a separate partition? What's the usage model that > > > drives a person to do that? The most I've ever done is > > > move /usr/portage and /usr/src to other places. My /usr never has > > > all that much in it beyond those two directories, along with > > > maybe /usr/share. Would it not be easier for you in the long run to > > > move /usr back to / and not have to deal with this question at all? > > > > I may be wrong in this one, but the idea I have is that your regular > > applications (so, most of them) all lie under /usr/ -- /lib /bin and > > others are for essential system tools. > > > > That was the original reason for having / and /usr separate, and it > dates back to the early 70s. The other reason that stems from that time > period is the size of disks we had back then - they were tiny and often > a minimal / was all that could really fit on the primary system drive.
I'm sorry, but I just can't let this one go. The reasons are backwards. The limitation in free space was the original reason [1] why / and /usr were separated. In fact, /usr was supposed to serve the same purpose as /home - it was originally a directory for users. It's only a quirk of history that served to keep most of the binaries in /usr when the home directories were moved elsewhere to /home. Long story short, Unix, too, has its share of old farts that are unwilling to embrace change at anything faster than a glacier's pace. Just ask the Plan 9 folks. [1] http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html -- This email is: [ ] actionable [x] fyi [ ] social Response needed: [ ] yes [ ] up to you [x] no Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [x] none
