[fhs-discuss] FHS/LSB Updates

[Bruce Dubbs]

Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Thursday 2011-11-17 00:26, Julian Fagir wrote:
>>> If ed is wanted, perhaps LSB should only include it by reference
>>> to POSIX, and not explicitly include it in LSB.
>> vi is often (or always?) placed in /usr/bin, and /usr is on a separate
>> partition.
> 
> So.. I don't quite see the connection of ed to vi being in /usr.
> 
>> There are many scenarios, and they all exclude vi from being in /.
> 
> Counter-example: openSUSE which ships vim in /bin.

Many of the legacy decisions have been made when disk drives were 
expensive and small.  I remember being excited when I bought my first 
hard drive: 80MB for the new low price of $600.  That was somewhere 
around 1985.

Today, I don't think you can get a new rotational disk drive that is 
less than 250GB (for about $40 to $60).  Even thumb drives are 16GB for 
less than $20.  The economics of HW today does have an impact on the 
disk layout.  What was appropriate in 1990 is not appropriate today.  I 
think the FHS should reflect that.

I have seen discussion about removing /usr/bin completely and putting 
everything on /usr.  There are multiple distributions that today say 
that they don't support a separate (or at least a remote) /usr partition.

What the FHS/LSB should be about is to not only set a standard about 
what facilities are available for a product today, but to provide a 
roadmap to what will be available in the future.  This means that 
programs that are of marginal use should be deprecated.

In the days when memory is measured in GB and disk in TB, things like vi 
in /bin and vim in /usr/bin is nonsensical.  The same can be said for 
the differences between dash and bash.

I don't know of any *programs* that rely on ed/at/batch.  Sure users can 
and do use them, but do they need to be part of a standard?

   -- Bruce