[systemd-devel] Antw: Re: Antw: Re: Antw: [EXT] Dropping split-usr/unmerged-usr support

[Ulrich Windl]

>>> Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com> schrieb am 07.04.2022 um 10:53 in
Nachricht
<CAEg-Je_t17eCbUFfpV7hZq-QzdMpTx8i7z90Ktqorhvat5q_WA at mail.gmail.com>:

...
> On the contrary, Windows has been much more organized than UNIX has
> been. In the C:\ hierarchy, the "Windows" directory contains all the

Ok, A fan of Windows!

> resources to run Windows itself. System-wide applications are all in
> "Program Files", and user data is in "Users". Those three directories

Several EXEs are in c:\Windows (like notepad.exe), more are in
C:\Windows\System32 like write.exe.
Those are really _not_ system programs.

There are more in SysWOW64, WinSxS, Microsoft.NET, etc.

> form the core of the Windows experience. There are obviously more
> directories, but those three are essential for Windows itself. And if
> you don't need any applications (just the base Windows OS), then you
> can get away with just C:\Windows.

Windows is a hug pot of mess: Why are the ICC color profiles in a "spool"
directory (C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color)?
Why are drivers in a spool directory?

> 
> UNIX, meanwhile, didn't have an opportunity to be thoughtful
> about how the hierarchy worked. Things got stuffed in where they could

UNIX had a hierarchy when MS-DOS still had everything in the root directory 10
years later.
Early versions of the FAT filesytem did not even have subdirectories.

> based on the size of diskettes and what could be held in memory. The
> fact that /usr doesn't actually represent where user data is proves
> it. "Unix System Resources" is a backronym to attempt to deal with the

In fact early UNIX systems _had_ user data in /usr.
Subdirectory in MS-DOS was so terribly slow that subdirectories were avoided.
In fact I think they started using subdirectories when the root filesystem was
full with 144 entries (or so).

---citation (UNIX Version 7 Volume 2B)---
New Users
Install new users by editing the password file /etc/passwd (passwd(5)). This
procedure should be
done once multi-user mode is entered (see init(8)). You’ll have to make a
current directory for each
new user and change its owner to the newly installed name. Login as each user
to make sure the password
file is correctly edited. For example:
ed /etc/passwd
$a
joe::10:1::/usr/joe:
w
q
mkdir /usr/joe
chown joe /usr/joe
login joe
ls – la
login root
This will make a new login entry for joe, who should be encouraged to use
passwd(1) to give himself a
password. His default current directory is /usr/joe which has been created.
The delivered password file
has the user bin in it to be used as a prototype.
----
(ed once was considered as genuine as systemd is now ;-)

> mistake of not renaming the directory when it evolved away from
> holding user data. The Unix hierarchy is *full* of mistakes and
> post-rationalizations ideally would be fixed someday but probably
> won't be.

Oh well: Windows 10 still has ini-files in \Windows, probably going back to
the times of Windows <=3 when there was no users and permissions, so they had
no concept of protection at all.
Now I think Windows is really not an example how to do things right.

Regards,
Ulrich Windl