[UFO Chicago] Re: Brian's Conversion from FreeBSD to Debian and Questions on X

[Ian Bicking]

Brian Sobolak wrote:
>>Similarly, /usr/local vs /usr annoys the heck out of me on FreeBSD.  Why
>>do I care what the FreeBSD people think is "core"?  /usr/local/bin/bash
>>does not amuse me.
> 
> 
> what about /bin vs /usr/bin?

Don't get me started on that too!  Silly taxonomies created for reasons 
that no longer exist, and often never existed (like /usr/share -- no one 
shares platform independent files among different platforms anyway).

/usr/bin makes a little more sense, but only slightly, and purely for 
bootstrapping reasons; it's not a pattern you should use elsewhere.

> /usr is pretty much only stuff put there at install time.  It's the stuff
> needed to run the OS, for the most part.

Isn't that exactly what non-usr is?

> /usr/local is anything that comes after, as selected by the user.

I selected for the operating system to be installed, it's all selected.

>>And where does *my* local stuff go if the base
>>operating system already takes a claim on /usr/local?
> 
> 
> As for your stuff, you add it to /usr/local/ or of course, /opt.

Not /usr/local -- then it gets mucked in with managed packages.  Bah.

I'm liking that gobo thing the more I think about it.  Not because it 
hurts me to read /usr/local/etc/rc.d -- I know what that means -- but 
because it's so silly and arbitrary.

>>Anyway...
>>nitpicking for everyone, hurrah!
> 
> It's been awhile since we've had any decent flammage here, anyway.
> 
> I think the thing that made me lose it, sort of, wasn't Linux's fault.  I
> wanted to add a user to sudoer; I saw a section of the sudoers man page
> that said "Don't despair what it is; EBNF is fairly simple."  What if you
> do know what it is and still feel despair?

That man page is clearly nutso.  It's a dead-simple config file made way 
too complex with the docs.  Best to skip to the examples and ignore the 
rest.

> At least I haven't been told "This man page is no longer kept up to date;
> the latest documentation is maintained as an info page."  Ugh.  info.

I don't know why they don't give up on that.  It's fairly uncommon for 
the info page to be any different than the manpage, except for long 
stuff that is better done as a web page.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org