Re: RFC

[Jochem Huhmann <joh@gmx.net>]

* Michael Stone <mstone@cs.loyola.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 06:54:07AM -0800, Robert W. Current wrote:
> > Linux was once fairly complete at 10M, now it's easily 500M in /usr, and
> > nothing in /usr/local or /opt.  That's starting to get rediculus.  The OS
> > is not 500M...  That's the issue.  So, why is there 500+M of crap in
> > /usr/bin?
> 
> Why would it be better to have 500M in /opt? That's the sticking point.
> You're saying that you don't want a standard that allows distributions
> to put things in /usr, and I'm saying that there are distributions that
> want to do things that way. Can you offer a reasoned argument to support
> why your way is right and the other way is wrong? 

I'm not him, but my argument is: Because it is easier to maintain. Just
look at recent distributions, they will happily install 3 GB as
"Linux". You can get also a "Linux" on one or two floppies. It is much
easier to agree on what Linux (the OS, not the buzzword) is, if you can
say "nothing but the base OS has to go to /usr (and /etc and /lib)".

It is not *necessary*, yes. You can also define a base OS which vanishes
somewhere in these 3 GB.

But the distribution packagers have to agree on that and I'm not one of
them, I'm just a user and admin. So I will better stop now. There is no
"right" or "wrong", but there are advantages and disadvantages - can you
tell me where the advantage of mixing everything is?

        Jochem

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