On Fri, 2017-06-23 at 16:41 +0200, Antony Stone wrote:

> https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/ if
> you want to start feeling annoyed as well as surprised.

Dunno, that one actually makes a lot of sense. Applying the logic of
Chesterton's Fence here seems sound. They did their homework in
researching the original reason for the tradition, carefully examined
the question of whether those reasons still apply and the consequences
of the change.

The original reason no longer applies, we should all agree on that
point, right? We don't NEED to install on a small volume and then mount
the large stuff on a different media, even when we install /usr on a
different filesystem it is almost always a partition on the same
physical device. So then we only have the question of whether it is
best to put everything down /usr or eliminate it. The arguments they
advance for snapshotting, using a read-only mount or network share of
pretty much the entire non-host specific portion of the OS is a pretty
good reason to pick putting everything down /usr. Counterarguments are
few.

If you don't want to use an initrd, just avoid making /usr a mountpoint.
As for rescue, in the before time when the /usr split occurred, cheap
live CD/USB stick rescue media was not an option. It is now.