<story><title>Debian considers merging /usr</title><url>https://dralnux.com/debian-considers-merging-usr/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jeena</author><text>So what are the arguments actually?&lt;p&gt;A couple of days ago I was reading some POSIX book from 1991 and there the layout of &amp;#x2F;bin &amp;#x2F;lib &amp;#x2F;shared &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;bin &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;lib &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;shared and so on was much more logical than what we have now which is just weird as far as I can see because I don&amp;#x27;t understand it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hawski</author><text>The best explanation goes from Rob Landley:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.busybox.net&amp;#x2F;pipermail&amp;#x2F;busybox&amp;#x2F;2010-December&amp;#x2F;074114.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.busybox.net&amp;#x2F;pipermail&amp;#x2F;busybox&amp;#x2F;2010-December&amp;#x2F;074...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some fragment:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When the operating system grew too big to fit on the first RK05 disk pack (their 
root filesystem) they let it leak into the second one, which is where all the 
user home directories lived (which is why the mount was called &amp;#x2F;usr).  They 
replicated all the OS directories under there (&amp;#x2F;bin, &amp;#x2F;sbin, &amp;#x2F;lib, &amp;#x2F;tmp...) and 
wrote files to those new directories because their original disk was out of 
space.  When they got a third disk, they mounted it on &amp;#x2F;home and relocated all 
the user directories to there so the OS could consume all the space on both 
disks and grow to THREE WHOLE MEGABYTES (ooooh!).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Of course they made rules about &amp;quot;when the system first boots, it has to come up 
enough to be able to mount the second disk on &amp;#x2F;usr, so don&amp;#x27;t put things like 
the mount command &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;bin or we&amp;#x27;ll have a chicken and egg problem bringing 
the system up.&amp;quot;  Fairly straightforward.  Also fairly specific to v6 unix of 35 
years ago.&lt;p&gt;It was discussed here few times:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=3519952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=3519952&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9554134&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9554134&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Debian considers merging /usr</title><url>https://dralnux.com/debian-considers-merging-usr/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jeena</author><text>So what are the arguments actually?&lt;p&gt;A couple of days ago I was reading some POSIX book from 1991 and there the layout of &amp;#x2F;bin &amp;#x2F;lib &amp;#x2F;shared &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;bin &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;lib &amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;name&amp;#x2F;shared and so on was much more logical than what we have now which is just weird as far as I can see because I don&amp;#x27;t understand it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavanky</author><text>Here is some discussion from ArchLinux[1] and Fedora[2]&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.archlinux.org&amp;#x2F;pipermail&amp;#x2F;arch-dev-public&amp;#x2F;2012-March&amp;#x2F;022625.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.archlinux.org&amp;#x2F;pipermail&amp;#x2F;arch-dev-public&amp;#x2F;2012-M...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fedoraproject.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Features&amp;#x2F;UsrMove&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fedoraproject.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Features&amp;#x2F;UsrMove&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>