File Systems.

[Robert W. Current]

I would like to open a discussion on the merit of moving "packaged"
userland software out of /usr/bin and to a different FHS compliant area.

The reasons for this are to allow more structured and organized
standards of systems administration, similar to those found in some of
the BSD flavors.  Hopefully, this can be done without making Linux into
a BSD system.

Although I understand that the de facto standard for some of the larger
Linux distributions uses /usr/bin as the default location for software,
I feel that /usr/bin growing to several G of software is a real problem
point for system administration.  Furthermore, the convention is not
completely standardized, shown by the use of /usr/local by distributions
such as Slackware.

I feel that this issue would be best addressed by people with long term
experience in system administration, instead of people speaking on
behalf of de facto standards imposed by Linux distributions.  This will
allow an intelligent discussion of a potentially useful default
"exportable" location, as well as a good feel for what essentially
useful tools should go in /usr/bin, and where "local system only" but
not "essential" files, scripts, and applications should be placed.