Fedora Aims To Simplify Linux Filesystem 803
jfruhlinger writes "Even Linux's most passionate partisans will admit that its filesystem, which stashes vital files in a variety of arcane directories, can be baffling to users. The developers at the Fedora project want to cut the Gordian knot and consolidate all executables into /usr/bin and all libraries into /usr/lib or /usr/lib64. One downside: this system would conflict with the standards developed by the Linux Standard Base, or the (rarely used) Filesystem Hierarchy Standard."
Re:When do we get compression? (Score:3, Interesting)
How important is that, really ? The only times I've used NTFS compression were for freeing up temp space on ancient servers, back when 9gb and 18gb SCSI drives were the norm. Seems like a throwaway feature to me.
For portable usage like CD/DVD and USB flash, a full-disk compressor like squashfs is just fine.
Re:When do we get compression? (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't need to. Linux has the ability to read/write compressed files directly (zclib?) and doesn't need the filesystems to support this. Which is great because it means compressed files will work under ALL filesystems ALL of the time (if you have the library installed) and you don't have to wait for each filesystem maintainer to add it. You also have no risks of one FS maintainer deciding another's implementation sucks and not being compatible with it. Which is very likely under Windows.
Re:Dumb move (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhh, I want my stuff separate from system stuff. I want to be able to back-up my stuff without including standard stuff.
System essentials should be in /bin. Non-essentials in /usr/bin, and my stuff in /usr/local/bin.
Fedora has jumped the shark.
I agree. I suspect the libraries are the more 'needed' change, but your point is valid even there.
What I'd like to know is what's wrong with the FreeBSD file system, and why don't they just 'do that'? IIRC, everything non-standard is in /usr/local. Some configs are in /etc, but most (all?) non-base configs live in /usr/local/etc. If you blow your system away and have backups of /usr/local and /etc under FreeBSD then you can just reinstall the base system and be 'fine' (aside from the local user files, but that's an obvious restore/backup situation.)
This smells a lot like "we want to do things our own way" (tm). I suppose that's fine, but don't act like you're doing humanity a service by wiping your butt with a different hand ;)
even simpler (Score:3, Interesting)