On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 15:28:10 -0500
William Peckham via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

> The great majority of this discussion lacks historical perspective. The
> Linux file system was derived directly from the pre-existing Unix file
> systems. Unix and its tools were markedly smaller at the time, but so was
> much storage. In general everything was allocated to a single file system
> and the paths were simple. /usr, /local, and other file systems were
> created for space expansion on small volumes, tool priority, and tool
> segregation as a clued to solve problems as Unix advanced and then as Linux
> arose. Merging is not really a new kludge, it is more of a return to the
> original standard in response to better management of tools, executables,
> and better choices for volumes. We should not see it as something outside
> the Unix philosophy that breaks the standards the way systemd does, but a
> return to the standards of Unix and Linux, and an attempt to keep things
> simple. One thing that has never changed is it simple is more dependable.

Hi,
apparently it is simple in reality it is not:
a monster folder of 3177 + 139 files
would be created on my desktop box
by merging /bin and /usr/bin and
it doesn't seem to me this helps a lot
to diagnose and fix problems if you
have some.
In the beginnings of my linux journey
some twenty and some years ago
I was fascinated by the fact that I could
create a full linux system with vesa video
and desktop in 1 or 2 1,44mb floppies,
everything was neat, clean and understandable
and this was a huge difference to the MS windows
systems that resembled voodoo and black magic.
This facts pushed me to embrace linux and the KISS
philosophy in computing and in life.
Nowadays I see a trend to trade KISS (and freedom
and privacy) for comfort and in the end
the man will transit from being able to
control complex machines to being controlled
by machines and AI algorithms nobody really
understands (but we trained it with TBs of data....
yet it will not be the same as 4 million years of evolution).
For me the KISS rule should be:
if it is needed to boot the system put it in /bin,/sbin,/lib
and if the resulting filesystem is bigger than a floppy
you are doing it wrong. Everything else goes in /usr.

Just my 0.2 cents.

Ciao,
Tito