Florian La Roche wrote: > > I can also see some points why /var/mail would be a better standard point > if we would make a "new" decision about this. But Linux has a large user > base now and after the move from /var/spool/mail to /var/mail, we would > not have gained a lot. So why do it? > > There are reasons why all distributions stayed with /var/spool/mail. > Even Debian who also thinks a lot about making things sane/clean has > stayed with /var/spool/mail. > > This standardization project should be documenting the current state > and the current movement. This will bring the Linux distributions > together and manifest the (global) movement to a standard Linux system. > I don't see any reason this project should dictate completely new > things to the different Linux distributions. They already do their best > to improve it.
I thought the purpose of this project (at least the FHS) is to create a standard of what the filesystem should look like, not necessarily what it currently looks like. Just because `Everyone is doing it' (tm) doesn't mean it's right. Personally, I want Linux to be clean and elegant in its implementation, so if that means breaking from convention and putting mail in /var/mail, so be it. I for one don't know the answer. Whatever the answer is should be the right one, not just the one people are doing. Gordon Tetlow