tito via Dng said on Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:03:33 +0100


>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.

I see your point, but going back to a couple megabyte for the OS is
impossible for any distro providing more than CLI and a few simple
servers. I think what you need is Slackware, Linux From Scratch, Plop
Linux, or a time machine.

I guess that was kind of snarky but seriously, if all you need is a
simple server and want a tiny OS, use Slackware of LFS. Or maybe *BSD.

As for me, if a Linux distro doesn't give me LyX, VSCode, a few
different browsers, Claws, Mutt and Evolution (because at any time one
or two are screwing up), Gnumeric, Inkscape, Python3, Python2 because
some dumbasses refuse to recode their software in Python 3, rsync, Lua,
and a C compiler with all libraries and header files, then I can't use
that distro. I don't think I'm alone in this.

You know, if I really, truly hated the /usr merge I'd find a
workaround. There's nothing preventing you from copying the necessary
files to /bin and /lib, then having early boot run a shellscript to do
the mounts after the boot is almost finished. Or I'm sure there are
five more ways to work around it. And once I worked around it, I'd
document my workaround so everyone can do it. You've seen me post links
to such documentation.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Devuan kicked systemd off your
system. That's good. That's great. It would be perfect to back out the
/usr merge, but not if that effort prevents them from addressing new
halloween code constantly introduced by redhat, opendesktop, poettering
and his new employer microsoft.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm