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GoboLinux: A distro that redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy

133 points by joshumax 9y ago

i_heart_robots 9y ago
These are just the kind of things we need. To take things right back to the beginning again. With Pioneers like Musk and the creator of GoboLinux, it is an amazing time to be alive.
Majora320 9y ago
Looks somewhat interesting. Essentially, it just switches the primary index from "type of file" (e.g. binary, config file etc.) to "program this belongs to". That has some advantages, as humans are more likely to want to search by program. I do have some issues with the distro's execution of this idea, though - the path names are far too verbose, and I'd rather not have to use the shift key twice in every path. I'd take '/etc/foo.conf' over '/Programs/Foo/Config/Foo.conf' any day.
- ZyanWu 9y ago
  Bash supports case-insensitive auto-complete, see if you like it: https://serverfault.com/questions/217418/case-insensitive-bash-auto-complete https://serverfault.com/questions/217418/case-insensitive-ba...
  - adamking 9y ago
    I use case-insensitive autocomplete (with zsh), and don't see myself switching back anytime soon.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  How does this compare to nixos/guix?
  - xelxebar 9y ago
    AFAIK, gobo "just" redefines the directory hierarchy along with a small kernel patch that lets you see an equivalent standard hierarchy. It has none of of the architecture for build reproducibility that nixos and guix boast.
  - carussell 9y ago
    From the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189792
- zanny 9y ago
  Who is searching for system package manager installed binaries in the filesystem by absolute path? On Arch pacman -Ql <package> shows me the equivalent of a /Program/<package>/ directory. Installed packages are organized for the benefit of the runtime environment since the user should never have to interact with the data hierarchy, much like how Android has a Data/<program name>/<random stufF> share dir with the packages cached elsewhere. The only real problem I have with the current standard FHS is how terribly named everything is. There are mechanical reasons why having all your libraries in /lib or all your binaries in /bin is necessary to the environment and linker.
pvdebbe 9y ago
Have to say -- it's looking real good otherwise. Cool scifi fonts and colors, awesome by default. Apparently it also skips systemd and pulseaudio -- a big plus, a big plus indeed.
rufius 9y ago
Gobo is a cool district - one of my favorites. I used it for a while in college with good success. Back then I recall the process for packaging being a little rough. I should give it another go to see how it has evolved.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  The change from /System/Links to /System/Index was done in part because of the issues with packaging. While Links used a gobo unique set of directory names to house the symlinks, Index basically acts like /usr/local. meaning that these days a compile is done pretty much as if one would do ./configure --prefix=/usr/local. But the install stage is captured by a union mount and the files transferred to their designated location in /Programs. Sadly this change makes it that much harder to run Gobolinux in Rootless form out of a home dir or similar.
bobsgame 9y ago
This is exactly what I have wanted for many years. This helps make Linux understandable and accessible to new computer users. Fantastic work, and thank you!
carlhjerpe 9y ago
I've always wondered why things wasn't set up like this from the beginning, much less pain for humans!
- chme 9y ago
  Because computers where originally designed to work within the given limitations. In current time, where we have more computing power and storage than we know what to do with it, we can allow computers to be inefficient for the sake of becoming easier to use.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  One giant directory for ls and one for cp? ;)
- jlebrech 9y ago
  each file (command) had one function and there wasn't a need to version things as much.
- remir 9y ago
  For some people Unix is like a religion. What the GoboLinux developers did is wonderful, and yet some people will criticize them because "what about Unix traditions?!".
- digi_owl 9y ago
  The FHS kinda grew organically, as best i can tell. As the initial installs of Unix bumped into problems, local solutions were found that was then documented and presented as gatherings or in newsletters.
koehr 9y ago
So they take the MacOS file structure to Linux? Sounds horrible to me. I always loved the structure of the Unix file system. It's simple and rather efficient. You wonder if a specific binary is installed? Look in /bin. You wonder if where to configure something? Look in /etc. You want to write a program that gives you a list of all binaries installed (like a shell)? Use the path variable that contains a few paths and check their contents. In gobolinux this variable is either huge or they use yet another mechanism. It clearly will not get better though. The file structure should be efficient for the computer and can be abstract for the user as they want a icon on their desktop and not much more.
- hdhzy 9y ago
  > Look in /bin. What about /usr/bin? /sbin? I know the background but Plan9's overlay directories are a better alternative to PATH.
- xenadu02 9y ago
  You think /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin (and so on) is simple and efficient? You do know it’s a hack because the original Unix computer was running out of space and they hadn’t invented Union mounts yet... right?
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    I think "/usr/bin" is simple and efficient, and Fedora/CentOS have converged on that a couple of years ago (/bin is a symlink to /usr/bin on those distros). /sbin is the same (linked to /usr/sbin). I find macOS paths atrocious (too long, too inconsistent, and derived completely outside of UNIX traditions and norms) and I certainly wouldn't want them on my Linux system. Discussion of the usr move on Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove Folks can progress without throwing away decades of tradition and tribal knowledge.
    - ahmedfromtunis 9y ago
      Would you please elaborate a bit more with regards to what makes the current system more efficient?
gcoda 9y ago
Version control of installed packages would be awesome. I am still on Arch coz I am lazy. It would be perfect if it worked like nixpkg or guix but simpler
- Filligree 9y ago
  Nix is much easier than it used to be, assuming you go all-in. Specifically, NixOS is; nix-without-NixOS has weird corners. If you haven't tried it in the last year or two, then you might want to give it another try. Keep to some simple rules: - Look for 'enable' toggles for particular software (for configuration.nix), rather than adding just the package. If it exists, use it; it wraps any extra configuration that's needed. - Don't use nix-env. If you want a package installed temporarily, use nix-shell. Your system is probably single-user anyway, right? This way you can put configuration.nix in git. - If you must use unpackaged software, then install and use steam-run. Despite the name, it's really just an Ubuntu-esque chroot. (...which duplicates the Steam runtime environment, yeah.) Forcing people to build package recipes for everything they want to use is helpful, but not actually required. :)
  - gcoda 9y ago
    Wow. Thanks a lot. You just covered all my questions about using nixos. I was confused about toggles vs packages. And about nix-env for a single user. Now i get it to the level of trying. Thanks you
    - Filligree 9y ago
      nix-env has its uses, but at least while you're learning it's better to put anything you need into systemPackages. Mainly because /etc/nixos should normally be a git repository. There isn't a good story for doing declarative package management with user packages (nix-env isn't it), though there are a hundred hacks.
  - DiThi 9y ago
    I came here to ask how GoboLinux compares to NixOS, because NixOS sounds like the perfect distro to me, and your comment pushed me to actually try it, thanks.
pm 9y ago
Copyright 2002-2017... must've been going for quite a while now.
- Semaphor 9y ago
  Indeed, 2003 was the first stable release: https://gobolinux.org/releases.html https://gobolinux.org/releases.html
steinuil 9y ago
I was interested in Gobo a few years ago, but I was a bit turned off by learning that it achieves this mostly by using a lot of symlinks.
- vkazanov 9y ago
  ...and? What's wrong with simlinks?
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Likely parroting the age old claim that symlinks are inefficient.
    - steinuil 9y ago
      No, I just think it's a messy way to address the problem.
onikolas 9y ago
So place your programs in a directory structure that makes sense and use symlinks to maintain compatibility. Simple and elegant. But... how do I go about actually installing those programs? Web search and then git-clone / manual download? How are dependencies resolved? Admittedly I haven't read the documentation, just the overview. On a related note, I feel like Arch struck a nice balance with pacman and AUR.
- ufo 9y ago
  It is a sorce-based distro so yes, basically you download source tarballs from the web and compile them locally. Gobolinux comes with scripts to help you conpile things using the custom hierarchy and for common patterns (like autotools stuff with configure make install) it is as almost as easy as it would be in a regular distro. You can then write scripts to automate this (including specifying all dependencies and where you got the tarball from) and share them with other uses on the Gobolinux Recipes website.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  There are two sets of programs/scripts (much of the gobo tools are actually shell scripts, with a few binaries or python scripts for higher performance). Scripts and Compile. https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin A package in Gobolinux is basically a tar-ball of the versioned dir in /Programs. So if a precompiled version is available in the Gobo repo (sadly fairly limited as there is not really any resources for a compile farm available), InstallPackage will fetch the latest from there, unpack it, and run SymlinkProgram to have /System/Index updated. Inside each package or recipe there is a Resources directory, inside there are a few files that describe the program or recipe, and a list of dependencies. these are parsed before compile or install, and additional updates/installs suggested. Compile is the recipe equivalent of InstallPackage. It will parse a recipe, check dependencies, and download the source from the included url. The compilation and install will then take place in a union mount overlaying /System/Index, redirecting writes to the target dir in /Programs. After that completes successfully, SymlinkProgram will again be run to update /System/Index. If you want to make a new recipe, there is MakeRecipe. You give it a name, a version number and a url (though it can attempt to guess the first two from the tar-ball name if left blank), and it downloads the tar-ball, unpacks it, and sets up a basic recipe of the content is one of the tools it has built in support for. Mostly a recipe is a set of steps to make things compile, things like switches to pass to configure. If you simply want to a newer version of an existing recipe, there is NewVersion. All you may need to feed it is the new version number, though it may need a url as well if the one from previous recipes are no longer valid.
blablabla123 9y ago
They are basically doing what GNU Stow does for everything. I enjoy the isolation but a normal package manager is in my experience more comfortable.
ropeladder 9y ago
Coming from Windows a year or so ago, the Linux filesystem has been probably the most confusing thing about the switch (I've read about the logic behind /var and /bin and /usr several times but it was not intuitive to me and didn't stick). I generally have no idea where my config files are stored and can barely find where programs keep their data. And then I download some software that doesn't install itself and I have to figure out where to put it... The fact that this is all only sorta-kinda standardized between distributions, and that you often have separate config files for the system, for the user, and for the session doesn't help either. It's not clear that GoboLinux entirely solves this issue but at first glance it looks like it's trying and the /Programs organization is pretty intuitive. What's not appealing at all though is using a distro that doesn't have custom packages for all the software I'm using (aka is not Ubuntu or RedHat based). I'm not at all comfortable building from source--when I've tried it I've rarely been successful--and the prospect of further winnowing down my choices (from not just Linux-compatible software to software that however many GoboLinux users have uploaded to their Recipes directory) is, well, pretty intimidating.
- Juliate 9y ago
  Switching operating systems and tools is always a messy experience. Coming from Linux and macOS to Windows this year, the Windows filesystem has been... well, one of the very confusing things. Although I understand the Linux fs is messy (and macOS improves a bit on that), I'm used to it and it makes sense. OT, the only good bit I found is the Outlook directory, mail, calendar, Office experience (but that will not make me stick to Windows either).
- thegeomaster 9y ago
  On your last point about installing software: I've used Ubuntu and Fedora, and finally settled on Arch ~4 years ago. Interestingly, although Arch has a reputation of being a "DIY" distribution (in the sense that it targets power users), I've had way more trouble installing software on Ubuntu and Fedora than on Arch. Arch has what is called the Arch User Repository (AUR). It's a repository of recipes for building all kinds of software, and it's submitted and maintained by the users, not maintainers of the distro itself. Whenever there's a package missing in the official repositories, I almost always find it in the AUR. AUR has no binary builds---instead, you download files and scripts needed to build the software from source. You then run the makepkg utility, and you get a package you can install. (There are also helper programs which automate this whole process for you.) The result is that the package manager tracks the files properly, and you can keep track of which version you have, can remove the software cleanly, and update it whenever you like. Today, when I'm at a Ubuntu box, it's a pain in the ass to install some less-known software. I can download the sources and then try to build, and I usually succeed, but not before I've figured out the right flags, prefixes, build-time and run-time dependencies, etc. I also get questions pertaining to this from my friends that have recently switched to Linux, and I don't really have a solution to offer. Yes, there are PPAs, but more often than not, PPAs are outdated and are binary-only, meaning you can't really review how the binary packages came about. AUR really solves the problem nicely. I'd like to see such a concept in another, more beginner-friendly distribution, that I can then recommend to people around me who are considering making the switch.
jbb67 9y ago
I like this a lot. This seems to be how it should be. However, not sure I'd use it. I guess I'll try it out in a VM and see how it goes :)
gbrown_ 9y ago
A lot of people talking about FHS here, let us not forget history. http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...
- JdeBP 9y ago
  For more on which see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134 .
nthcolumn 9y ago
Okay so correct me if I am wrong: the original root structure is still there just hidden with this Gobohide thing. (I do not like this - turn off immediately). You download tarballs into Programs and unpack and configure make install there, it 'just works'TM somehow, (I like this - sort of). I think 'Couldn't you create a script which creates a load of symlinks (for any distro), put it in a folder on your desktop?' Okay,.. help me here - what problem are we trying to solve again? I like the nice view of the applications we have, but just thinking quite often packages have their own symlinks for like lib.so.2-->lib.so.3 will this have symlinks to symlinks to... so now thinking is it really worth the effort for a nice view of the applications? What else do I get?
- ufo 9y ago
  That thing about the bunch of symlinks actually reflects how Gobolinux was first created :). Onde of the devs didnt havê root access in their university lab computer so they came up with this alternate organization that let them install everything they needed inside a directory in their home folder. He grew fond of that folder organization and later on grouped up with some friends to find out what would happen if they made a custom distro where everything used the alternate organization. As for what benefit this brings... One big one is that it makes it very easy to mix together programs installed via the package manager and programs you compiled from source by hand. There is no need for an alternate /use/local hierarchy. Similarly it it better at handling those situations where you might want to install multiple versions of some software. It can create different versions of that virtual root filesystem but with symlinks that point to different versions in each one. The end result is similar to what you would get with chroot and other "container" tech but in a quite elegant way.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    There's also the fact - if I understand it correctly - that the filesystem in Gobo -is- the "package database"; if it is in the filesystem, it's installed and can be looked up easily by the system. Or browsed manually. It's also friendly to manual installs; once you install things manually, it's now a part of the package database! That's the one thing I hate about package managers - if you need to install from source, the manager has no clue about it; in fact, you can have multiple versions installed - a new version "from source" and an old version from a real package via the manager! It's also possible for the manager to uninstall stuff it knows about - along with part of the stuff of the new version, depending on various things. I ran into that earlier when I had to upgrade and munge my Ubuntu system to get TensorFlow to work properly with Python 3 and some other stuff and crap I forget about; long story short, I can no longer perform an upgrade to my system (I'm on 14.04 too!) - the tool b0rks hard when I try, and I honestly don't recall enough to return my system back to working status (I also had to install a major upgrade to gcc - which necessitated upgrades to other things, new manual symlinks, hours of swearing). This was all needed for the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree because of their system requirements for code and such (had I been running 16.04, it would have been easier - most likely - but that was also fraught with potential issues, which is why I didn't pursue it). Looking back on things, I probably shoulda used a container or VM, or built a new machine, but I was pressed for time. I was assured in the beginning, before the class started, that what I had would work - like many things in the course, this wasn't true (I'm not saying they lied or misrepresented stuff - my cohort was only the second cohort from November, and so I am a part of the "guinea pig" crowd as they debug the new course - paying beta tester, if you will). A system like Gobo might have been useful for this...
jbverschoor 9y ago
It's funny how more and more macos designs are being copied over. First systemd, now this.
- noisem4ker 9y ago
  GoboLinux was first released in 2003.
  - TickleSteve 9y ago
    ...and the NextStep/OSX layout is from '88.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Well unlike systemd, gobolinux is happy to play in its own sandbox without demanding that any other sandboxes be altered to fit their preferences. Never mind that Gobolinux do not even use Systemd.
arghwhat 9y ago
That's cool and all, but oh dear god WHY did you have to capitalize things?! BLASPHEMY.
- perryprog 9y ago
  Case insensitive auto completion FTW.
  - arghwhat 9y ago
    That's a nice convenience feature, but when it starts to become a necessity, you should really reconsider your naming schemes...
- ufo 9y ago
  Capitalizing the directory names is a way to guarantee that they will not conflict with the directories in the legacy file system hierarchy.
  - arghwhat 9y ago
    I find that to be quite a weak argument. Avoid conflicting with known standard structures such as "bin" ans "etc" if necessary (which it isn't—you could theoretically run all applications in a filesystem namespace mimicking their expected structure), but that should be the only concern. Non-standard structures might clash anyway (capitalized folders in root does unfortunately occur).
    - ufo 9y ago
      The known standard does change though. For example, since Gobolinux came out in 2003 the FSH added /run and /sys...
arghwhat 9y ago
That's cool and all, but oh dear god WHY did you have to capitalize things?! BLASPHEMY.
arca_vorago 9y ago
I live the gobo fs, but I don't lie the rest of the distro that much. I've often though a bigger distro like manjaro could use the fs and show the world how good it is. I've been sysadmining for a long time, and even I get lost in the old dir structure sometimes, I've just gotten good at the find command.
davemp 9y ago
Kind of interesting, but honestly I'd like to see a much more drastic departure from UNIX roots. If you want to clean things up, go all in. I wouldn't hire a cleaning service to clean 1/5th of my house (especially if they left some clutter in that 1/5th because they thought I might miss it). A small change like this is cool but pacman/aur leaves almost nothing to be desired for dealing with my programs. I do like the idea, but I would need to see a compelling philosophy for the __whole__ system.
stuaxo 9y ago
This is incredibly sane. What a nice logical system, I've been a Linux user for about 15 years but would definitely prefer this.
traverseda 9y ago
It's currently pretty annoying to set up gobolinux in "home-dir" mode. I tried, and the documentation failed to link to the correct scripts, and after searching the scripts out, I got a "permission denied" error when I tried to download them, and a request for a user/password combo that wasn't documented anywhere. What I wanted to do was create an "append only" "everything is installed" operating system on top of ipfs. Gobo, with it's ability to have multiple versions of each component in the same tree, seemed perfect for that. The idea being that you just run an executable right out of the ipfs mount.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Best i understand, the "home-dir" mode, or Rootless, was depreciated because it needed a major rework to be compatible wit their switch to the /usr like /System/Index.
todd8 9y ago
Many readers of HN won't need this explanation of the Unix/Linux/MacOS filesystem hierarchy, but for those that find it confusing here is a very brief summary. See Wikipedia for a more in depth discussion [1]. When Unix was invented, the concept of hierarchical filesystems wasn't new, notably Multics had a hierarchical filesystem, but there were conflicting visions. At the time, most other operating systems divided the filesystems between a number of top-level containers containing files, but no nested containers. IBM's contemporary time-sharing system, VM/370, supplied users with a set of top-level "virtual" drives each containing any number of files. There were no recursively nested directories. The designers of Unix wanted a simple Operating System suitable for software development so they tended to implement an idea and then use it as much as practical in the OS design. Rather than have top-level containers like drives that contain folders that contain files, Unix just had directories and files (both implemented with the same on device structures called inodes). This combination of simple ideas fully generalized can be seen throughout Unix: multiple pathnames can point (link) to the same inode providing a form of aliasing for filenames, the api for files is generalized to include access to (possibly raw) devices so devices show up in the filesystem hierarchy, etc. [/] The top level directory has the name /, unlike other systems all filesystem pathnames start at this single point. [/etc] System configuration is found here. Most of these files are simple text files that may be edited by system administrators. In the past administrators might directly edit /etc/passwd to remove a user. Now, things are more complex, but there is still a backwards compatible /etc/passwd file (containing encrypted passwords, etc.). [/bin and /sbin] Unix, from the beginning was, like it's inspiration Multics, a multi-user system. Reconfiguring the system, for example to add a printer or drive, normally required running in single user mode at a privileged level. For this reason the programs needed by administrators running single user were segregated and placed in /bin. The rest of the system could be left offline, useful when working on the rest of the system. As Unix grew, more and more utilities were added to /bin until it made sense to segregate it into those utilities needed when even a normal user might find themselves in single user mode vs a system administrator doing something dangerous. The super-user type programs now go in /sbin while the essential, but far less dangerous utilities go in /bin. Ordinary file copy is /bin/cp while the reboot command is /sbin/reboot. Some of the division look arbitrary to me, like /sbin/ping instead of /bin/ping, but there is probably logic behind it. [/usr and /var] Once booted up normally in multi-user mode, /usr contains system read-only content (for example, programs and libraries) and /var contains system content that is variable (like log files). The /usr directory is large and subsequently divided into a number of second level directories. [/usr/bin] This is where the rest of the Unix "binaries" (i.e. programs) reside. So while ls (the list directory command) is /bin/ls the c compiler resides in /usr/bin and is /usr/bin/gcc. [/usr/sbin] Like the division between /bin and /sbin more administrative commands not necessary for single user mode (see /sbin) are placed in /usr/sbin. For example, the command /usr/sbin/setquota used to set disk quotas on users is in /usr/sbin and not in /usr/bin. [/usr/lib] This is where Unix supplied software development libraries go. [/usr/include] This is where Unix supplied (predominantly C and C++) include files are placed. [/usr/share] System documentation, the man pages, and spelling dictionaries are examples of the files found in /usr/share. They are read-only files used by the system under normal (multi-user) operation. By now /usr/share is full of further subdivisions since many programs and systems need a place to put their read-only information. For example there is a /usr/share/cups for the Common Unix Printing System to store information about printers, etc. [/usr/local] System administrators may add additional local data and programs to their system. It make sense that these would be segregated from the rest of the files under /usr that come with Unix. The contents of /usr/local are local to the machine and are further subdivided into programs in /usr/local/bin and read-only data for these programs in /usr/local/share. [/usr/X11...] Once, one of the biggest subsystems in Unix was it's support for the graphical user interface known as the X window system. There were development libraries and include files, commands, man pages, and other executables. Rather than swamping the neat file hierarchy with these new files they were placed under a single subdirectory of /usr. You will probably not need to look at this very often. [/home] Users home directories are placed here; mine is /home/todd. Often /home is on a different physical partition so that it can be unmounted and a new version of the operating system can be installed without touching /home. [/tmp] Temporary files, for example that don't need to be backed up, are placed here. [/mnt] I've mentioned mounting and unmounting. Unix systems support a number of different filesystem formats, and devices can contain multiple filesystems (for example on distinct partitions). These filesystem become accessible once they are mounted into the hierarchy. Users need to temporarily (and now automatically) mount USB drives somewhere so that their files can be accessed via a pathname. In the past, users would just pick a directory to mount over. Now, it's traditional for temporary mounts to be placed in /mnt. [/dev] In Unix, low level access to devices is done through device drivers that support a number of file interfaces. Because they appear as special files they can be found under this directory. This is a convenience for programs because it makes naming and access to devices very similar to naming for ordinary files. [Finding out more information about Unix and its hierarchy] The Unix manual pages are a great resource. Originally, the manual was a physical book (I've still got a couple) divided into sections. Section 1 were the commands one might type on the command line. Now it is much easier to simply use the man command to access the exact same content. Use a terminal and enter "man ls", for example, to get all the information on the ls command to list directory contents. (You will be surprised at the number of options.) When you aren't sure of the command's name try the command "apropos" followed by a word you'd like to find the man page for. Passwords are an important subject so "apropos password" on my system lists 47 different manual pages for information on passwords. I see one listed as "passwd(1)". The (1) means it's section one so its about a command named "passwd", the command for changing your password. Here are the sections: (1) Commands (2) System calls (3) Library functions (4) Special files like device files (5) File formats (6) Recreations like games (7) Misc info (8) System admin and daemons If I was looking for the format of the password file I would enter the section number 5 as the first argument to the man command: "man 5 passwd". This would show me the documentation for the password file, /etc/passwd. Filesystem hierarchy manual page: "man 7 hier" or, since it is in only one section: "man hier". To find the name, "hier", of this man page one could have used the command "apropos filesystem". I hope this helps; it's probably too long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
digi_owl 9y ago
A little something to note, with the latest release there is a tool, Alien, that integrate language specific package managers with the Gobolinux directory tree. Meaning that downloads from cpan or similar will be placed in a sub-directory of /Programs and managed just like any other Gobolinux package. Right now perl, python, ruby, and lua are supported (afaik).
lproven 9y ago
I've occasionally played with Gobo for years now. I am delighted to see it coming back to life of late. One thing I've always thought would be ideal would be if either or both of the 2 Linux desktops that natively implement the idea of application-directories were top support Gobo app-dirs. Those 2 are GNUstep: http://www.gnustep.org/ http://www.gnustep.org/ ... and the ROX Desktop: http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/ http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/ GNUstep implements NeXTstep/macOS style app dirs: a top-level Appname.app folder with an OS X-like structure inside it. ROX Desktop implements Acorn RISC OS-style app dirs, called !Appname ... and containing a different but comparable layout.

133 points by joshumax 9y ago

These are just the kind of things we need. To take things right back to the beginning again. With Pioneers like Musk and the creator of GoboLinux, it is an amazing time to be alive.

Majora320 9y ago

Looks somewhat interesting. Essentially, it just switches the primary index from "type of file" (e.g. binary, config file etc.) to "program this belongs to". That has some advantages, as humans are more likely to want to search by program. I do have some issues with the distro's execution of this idea, though - the path names are far too verbose, and I'd rather not have to use the shift key twice in every path. I'd take '/etc/foo.conf' over '/Programs/Foo/Config/Foo.conf' any day.

ZyanWu 9y ago
Bash supports case-insensitive auto-complete, see if you like it: https://serverfault.com/questions/217418/case-insensitive-bash-auto-complete https://serverfault.com/questions/217418/case-insensitive-ba...
- adamking 9y ago
  I use case-insensitive autocomplete (with zsh), and don't see myself switching back anytime soon.
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
How does this compare to nixos/guix?
- xelxebar 9y ago
  AFAIK, gobo "just" redefines the directory hierarchy along with a small kernel patch that lets you see an equivalent standard hierarchy. It has none of of the architecture for build reproducibility that nixos and guix boast.
- carussell 9y ago
  From the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189792
zanny 9y ago
Who is searching for system package manager installed binaries in the filesystem by absolute path? On Arch pacman -Ql <package> shows me the equivalent of a /Program/<package>/ directory. Installed packages are organized for the benefit of the runtime environment since the user should never have to interact with the data hierarchy, much like how Android has a Data/<program name>/<random stufF> share dir with the packages cached elsewhere. The only real problem I have with the current standard FHS is how terribly named everything is. There are mechanical reasons why having all your libraries in /lib or all your binaries in /bin is necessary to the environment and linker.

pvdebbe 9y ago

Have to say -- it's looking real good otherwise. Cool scifi fonts and colors, awesome by default. Apparently it also skips systemd and pulseaudio -- a big plus, a big plus indeed.

rufius 9y ago

Gobo is a cool district - one of my favorites. I used it for a while in college with good success. Back then I recall the process for packaging being a little rough. I should give it another go to see how it has evolved.

digi_owl 9y ago
The change from /System/Links to /System/Index was done in part because of the issues with packaging. While Links used a gobo unique set of directory names to house the symlinks, Index basically acts like /usr/local. meaning that these days a compile is done pretty much as if one would do ./configure --prefix=/usr/local. But the install stage is captured by a union mount and the files transferred to their designated location in /Programs. Sadly this change makes it that much harder to run Gobolinux in Rootless form out of a home dir or similar.

bobsgame 9y ago

This is exactly what I have wanted for many years. This helps make Linux understandable and accessible to new computer users. Fantastic work, and thank you!

carlhjerpe 9y ago

I've always wondered why things wasn't set up like this from the beginning, much less pain for humans!

chme 9y ago
Because computers where originally designed to work within the given limitations. In current time, where we have more computing power and storage than we know what to do with it, we can allow computers to be inefficient for the sake of becoming easier to use.
blablabla123 9y ago
One giant directory for ls and one for cp? ;)
jlebrech 9y ago
each file (command) had one function and there wasn't a need to version things as much.
remir 9y ago
For some people Unix is like a religion. What the GoboLinux developers did is wonderful, and yet some people will criticize them because "what about Unix traditions?!".
digi_owl 9y ago
The FHS kinda grew organically, as best i can tell. As the initial installs of Unix bumped into problems, local solutions were found that was then documented and presented as gatherings or in newsletters.

koehr 9y ago

So they take the MacOS file structure to Linux? Sounds horrible to me. I always loved the structure of the Unix file system. It's simple and rather efficient. You wonder if a specific binary is installed? Look in /bin. You wonder if where to configure something? Look in /etc. You want to write a program that gives you a list of all binaries installed (like a shell)? Use the path variable that contains a few paths and check their contents. In gobolinux this variable is either huge or they use yet another mechanism. It clearly will not get better though. The file structure should be efficient for the computer and can be abstract for the user as they want a icon on their desktop and not much more.

hdhzy 9y ago
> Look in /bin. What about /usr/bin? /sbin? I know the background but Plan9's overlay directories are a better alternative to PATH.
xenadu02 9y ago
You think /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin (and so on) is simple and efficient? You do know it’s a hack because the original Unix computer was running out of space and they hadn’t invented Union mounts yet... right?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I think "/usr/bin" is simple and efficient, and Fedora/CentOS have converged on that a couple of years ago (/bin is a symlink to /usr/bin on those distros). /sbin is the same (linked to /usr/sbin). I find macOS paths atrocious (too long, too inconsistent, and derived completely outside of UNIX traditions and norms) and I certainly wouldn't want them on my Linux system. Discussion of the usr move on Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove Folks can progress without throwing away decades of tradition and tribal knowledge.
  - ahmedfromtunis 9y ago
    Would you please elaborate a bit more with regards to what makes the current system more efficient?

gcoda 9y ago

Version control of installed packages would be awesome. I am still on Arch coz I am lazy. It would be perfect if it worked like nixpkg or guix but simpler

Filligree 9y ago
Nix is much easier than it used to be, assuming you go all-in. Specifically, NixOS is; nix-without-NixOS has weird corners. If you haven't tried it in the last year or two, then you might want to give it another try. Keep to some simple rules: - Look for 'enable' toggles for particular software (for configuration.nix), rather than adding just the package. If it exists, use it; it wraps any extra configuration that's needed. - Don't use nix-env. If you want a package installed temporarily, use nix-shell. Your system is probably single-user anyway, right? This way you can put configuration.nix in git. - If you must use unpackaged software, then install and use steam-run. Despite the name, it's really just an Ubuntu-esque chroot. (...which duplicates the Steam runtime environment, yeah.) Forcing people to build package recipes for everything they want to use is helpful, but not actually required. :)
- gcoda 9y ago
  Wow. Thanks a lot. You just covered all my questions about using nixos. I was confused about toggles vs packages. And about nix-env for a single user. Now i get it to the level of trying. Thanks you
  - Filligree 9y ago
    nix-env has its uses, but at least while you're learning it's better to put anything you need into systemPackages. Mainly because /etc/nixos should normally be a git repository. There isn't a good story for doing declarative package management with user packages (nix-env isn't it), though there are a hundred hacks.
- DiThi 9y ago
  I came here to ask how GoboLinux compares to NixOS, because NixOS sounds like the perfect distro to me, and your comment pushed me to actually try it, thanks.

pm 9y ago

Semaphor 9y ago
Indeed, 2003 was the first stable release: https://gobolinux.org/releases.html https://gobolinux.org/releases.html

steinuil 9y ago

I was interested in Gobo a few years ago, but I was a bit turned off by learning that it achieves this mostly by using a lot of symlinks.

vkazanov 9y ago
...and? What's wrong with simlinks?
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Likely parroting the age old claim that symlinks are inefficient.
  - steinuil 9y ago
    No, I just think it's a messy way to address the problem.

onikolas 9y ago

So place your programs in a directory structure that makes sense and use symlinks to maintain compatibility. Simple and elegant. But... how do I go about actually installing those programs? Web search and then git-clone / manual download? How are dependencies resolved? Admittedly I haven't read the documentation, just the overview. On a related note, I feel like Arch struck a nice balance with pacman and AUR.

ufo 9y ago
It is a sorce-based distro so yes, basically you download source tarballs from the web and compile them locally. Gobolinux comes with scripts to help you conpile things using the custom hierarchy and for common patterns (like autotools stuff with configure make install) it is as almost as easy as it would be in a regular distro. You can then write scripts to automate this (including specifying all dependencies and where you got the tarball from) and share them with other uses on the Gobolinux Recipes website.
digi_owl 9y ago
There are two sets of programs/scripts (much of the gobo tools are actually shell scripts, with a few binaries or python scripts for higher performance). Scripts and Compile. https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin A package in Gobolinux is basically a tar-ball of the versioned dir in /Programs. So if a precompiled version is available in the Gobo repo (sadly fairly limited as there is not really any resources for a compile farm available), InstallPackage will fetch the latest from there, unpack it, and run SymlinkProgram to have /System/Index updated. Inside each package or recipe there is a Resources directory, inside there are a few files that describe the program or recipe, and a list of dependencies. these are parsed before compile or install, and additional updates/installs suggested. Compile is the recipe equivalent of InstallPackage. It will parse a recipe, check dependencies, and download the source from the included url. The compilation and install will then take place in a union mount overlaying /System/Index, redirecting writes to the target dir in /Programs. After that completes successfully, SymlinkProgram will again be run to update /System/Index. If you want to make a new recipe, there is MakeRecipe. You give it a name, a version number and a url (though it can attempt to guess the first two from the tar-ball name if left blank), and it downloads the tar-ball, unpacks it, and sets up a basic recipe of the content is one of the tools it has built in support for. Mostly a recipe is a set of steps to make things compile, things like switches to pass to configure. If you simply want to a newer version of an existing recipe, there is NewVersion. All you may need to feed it is the new version number, though it may need a url as well if the one from previous recipes are no longer valid.

blablabla123 9y ago

They are basically doing what GNU Stow does for everything. I enjoy the isolation but a normal package manager is in my experience more comfortable.

ropeladder 9y ago

Coming from Windows a year or so ago, the Linux filesystem has been probably the most confusing thing about the switch (I've read about the logic behind /var and /bin and /usr several times but it was not intuitive to me and didn't stick). I generally have no idea where my config files are stored and can barely find where programs keep their data. And then I download some software that doesn't install itself and I have to figure out where to put it... The fact that this is all only sorta-kinda standardized between distributions, and that you often have separate config files for the system, for the user, and for the session doesn't help either. It's not clear that GoboLinux entirely solves this issue but at first glance it looks like it's trying and the /Programs organization is pretty intuitive. What's not appealing at all though is using a distro that doesn't have custom packages for all the software I'm using (aka is not Ubuntu or RedHat based). I'm not at all comfortable building from source--when I've tried it I've rarely been successful--and the prospect of further winnowing down my choices (from not just Linux-compatible software to software that however many GoboLinux users have uploaded to their Recipes directory) is, well, pretty intimidating.

Juliate 9y ago
Switching operating systems and tools is always a messy experience. Coming from Linux and macOS to Windows this year, the Windows filesystem has been... well, one of the very confusing things. Although I understand the Linux fs is messy (and macOS improves a bit on that), I'm used to it and it makes sense. OT, the only good bit I found is the Outlook directory, mail, calendar, Office experience (but that will not make me stick to Windows either).
thegeomaster 9y ago
On your last point about installing software: I've used Ubuntu and Fedora, and finally settled on Arch ~4 years ago. Interestingly, although Arch has a reputation of being a "DIY" distribution (in the sense that it targets power users), I've had way more trouble installing software on Ubuntu and Fedora than on Arch. Arch has what is called the Arch User Repository (AUR). It's a repository of recipes for building all kinds of software, and it's submitted and maintained by the users, not maintainers of the distro itself. Whenever there's a package missing in the official repositories, I almost always find it in the AUR. AUR has no binary builds---instead, you download files and scripts needed to build the software from source. You then run the makepkg utility, and you get a package you can install. (There are also helper programs which automate this whole process for you.) The result is that the package manager tracks the files properly, and you can keep track of which version you have, can remove the software cleanly, and update it whenever you like. Today, when I'm at a Ubuntu box, it's a pain in the ass to install some less-known software. I can download the sources and then try to build, and I usually succeed, but not before I've figured out the right flags, prefixes, build-time and run-time dependencies, etc. I also get questions pertaining to this from my friends that have recently switched to Linux, and I don't really have a solution to offer. Yes, there are PPAs, but more often than not, PPAs are outdated and are binary-only, meaning you can't really review how the binary packages came about. AUR really solves the problem nicely. I'd like to see such a concept in another, more beginner-friendly distribution, that I can then recommend to people around me who are considering making the switch.

jbb67 9y ago

I like this a lot. This seems to be how it should be. However, not sure I'd use it. I guess I'll try it out in a VM and see how it goes :)

gbrown_ 9y ago

A lot of people talking about FHS here, let us not forget history. http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...

JdeBP 9y ago
For more on which see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134 .

nthcolumn 9y ago

Okay so correct me if I am wrong: the original root structure is still there just hidden with this Gobohide thing. (I do not like this - turn off immediately). You download tarballs into Programs and unpack and configure make install there, it 'just works'TM somehow, (I like this - sort of). I think 'Couldn't you create a script which creates a load of symlinks (for any distro), put it in a folder on your desktop?' Okay,.. help me here - what problem are we trying to solve again? I like the nice view of the applications we have, but just thinking quite often packages have their own symlinks for like lib.so.2-->lib.so.3 will this have symlinks to symlinks to... so now thinking is it really worth the effort for a nice view of the applications? What else do I get?

ufo 9y ago
That thing about the bunch of symlinks actually reflects how Gobolinux was first created :). Onde of the devs didnt havê root access in their university lab computer so they came up with this alternate organization that let them install everything they needed inside a directory in their home folder. He grew fond of that folder organization and later on grouped up with some friends to find out what would happen if they made a custom distro where everything used the alternate organization. As for what benefit this brings... One big one is that it makes it very easy to mix together programs installed via the package manager and programs you compiled from source by hand. There is no need for an alternate /use/local hierarchy. Similarly it it better at handling those situations where you might want to install multiple versions of some software. It can create different versions of that virtual root filesystem but with symlinks that point to different versions in each one. The end result is similar to what you would get with chroot and other "container" tech but in a quite elegant way.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  There's also the fact - if I understand it correctly - that the filesystem in Gobo -is- the "package database"; if it is in the filesystem, it's installed and can be looked up easily by the system. Or browsed manually. It's also friendly to manual installs; once you install things manually, it's now a part of the package database! That's the one thing I hate about package managers - if you need to install from source, the manager has no clue about it; in fact, you can have multiple versions installed - a new version "from source" and an old version from a real package via the manager! It's also possible for the manager to uninstall stuff it knows about - along with part of the stuff of the new version, depending on various things. I ran into that earlier when I had to upgrade and munge my Ubuntu system to get TensorFlow to work properly with Python 3 and some other stuff and crap I forget about; long story short, I can no longer perform an upgrade to my system (I'm on 14.04 too!) - the tool b0rks hard when I try, and I honestly don't recall enough to return my system back to working status (I also had to install a major upgrade to gcc - which necessitated upgrades to other things, new manual symlinks, hours of swearing). This was all needed for the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree because of their system requirements for code and such (had I been running 16.04, it would have been easier - most likely - but that was also fraught with potential issues, which is why I didn't pursue it). Looking back on things, I probably shoulda used a container or VM, or built a new machine, but I was pressed for time. I was assured in the beginning, before the class started, that what I had would work - like many things in the course, this wasn't true (I'm not saying they lied or misrepresented stuff - my cohort was only the second cohort from November, and so I am a part of the "guinea pig" crowd as they debug the new course - paying beta tester, if you will). A system like Gobo might have been useful for this...

jbverschoor 9y ago

It's funny how more and more macos designs are being copied over. First systemd, now this.

noisem4ker 9y ago
GoboLinux was first released in 2003.
- TickleSteve 9y ago
  ...and the NextStep/OSX layout is from '88.
digi_owl 9y ago
Well unlike systemd, gobolinux is happy to play in its own sandbox without demanding that any other sandboxes be altered to fit their preferences. Never mind that Gobolinux do not even use Systemd.

arghwhat 9y ago

That's cool and all, but oh dear god WHY did you have to capitalize things?! BLASPHEMY.

perryprog 9y ago
Case insensitive auto completion FTW.
- arghwhat 9y ago
  That's a nice convenience feature, but when it starts to become a necessity, you should really reconsider your naming schemes...
ufo 9y ago
Capitalizing the directory names is a way to guarantee that they will not conflict with the directories in the legacy file system hierarchy.
- arghwhat 9y ago
  I find that to be quite a weak argument. Avoid conflicting with known standard structures such as "bin" ans "etc" if necessary (which it isn't—you could theoretically run all applications in a filesystem namespace mimicking their expected structure), but that should be the only concern. Non-standard structures might clash anyway (capitalized folders in root does unfortunately occur).
  - ufo 9y ago
    The known standard does change though. For example, since Gobolinux came out in 2003 the FSH added /run and /sys...

arghwhat 9y ago

That's cool and all, but oh dear god WHY did you have to capitalize things?! BLASPHEMY.

arca_vorago 9y ago

I live the gobo fs, but I don't lie the rest of the distro that much. I've often though a bigger distro like manjaro could use the fs and show the world how good it is. I've been sysadmining for a long time, and even I get lost in the old dir structure sometimes, I've just gotten good at the find command.

davemp 9y ago

Kind of interesting, but honestly I'd like to see a much more drastic departure from UNIX roots. If you want to clean things up, go all in. I wouldn't hire a cleaning service to clean 1/5th of my house (especially if they left some clutter in that 1/5th because they thought I might miss it). A small change like this is cool but pacman/aur leaves almost nothing to be desired for dealing with my programs. I do like the idea, but I would need to see a compelling philosophy for the __whole__ system.

stuaxo 9y ago

This is incredibly sane. What a nice logical system, I've been a Linux user for about 15 years but would definitely prefer this.

traverseda 9y ago

It's currently pretty annoying to set up gobolinux in "home-dir" mode. I tried, and the documentation failed to link to the correct scripts, and after searching the scripts out, I got a "permission denied" error when I tried to download them, and a request for a user/password combo that wasn't documented anywhere. What I wanted to do was create an "append only" "everything is installed" operating system on top of ipfs. Gobo, with it's ability to have multiple versions of each component in the same tree, seemed perfect for that. The idea being that you just run an executable right out of the ipfs mount.

digi_owl 9y ago
Best i understand, the "home-dir" mode, or Rootless, was depreciated because it needed a major rework to be compatible wit their switch to the /usr like /System/Index.

todd8 9y ago

Many readers of HN won't need this explanation of the Unix/Linux/MacOS filesystem hierarchy, but for those that find it confusing here is a very brief summary. See Wikipedia for a more in depth discussion [1]. When Unix was invented, the concept of hierarchical filesystems wasn't new, notably Multics had a hierarchical filesystem, but there were conflicting visions. At the time, most other operating systems divided the filesystems between a number of top-level containers containing files, but no nested containers. IBM's contemporary time-sharing system, VM/370, supplied users with a set of top-level "virtual" drives each containing any number of files. There were no recursively nested directories. The designers of Unix wanted a simple Operating System suitable for software development so they tended to implement an idea and then use it as much as practical in the OS design. Rather than have top-level containers like drives that contain folders that contain files, Unix just had directories and files (both implemented with the same on device structures called inodes). This combination of simple ideas fully generalized can be seen throughout Unix: multiple pathnames can point (link) to the same inode providing a form of aliasing for filenames, the api for files is generalized to include access to (possibly raw) devices so devices show up in the filesystem hierarchy, etc. [/] The top level directory has the name /, unlike other systems all filesystem pathnames start at this single point. [/etc] System configuration is found here. Most of these files are simple text files that may be edited by system administrators. In the past administrators might directly edit /etc/passwd to remove a user. Now, things are more complex, but there is still a backwards compatible /etc/passwd file (containing encrypted passwords, etc.). [/bin and /sbin] Unix, from the beginning was, like it's inspiration Multics, a multi-user system. Reconfiguring the system, for example to add a printer or drive, normally required running in single user mode at a privileged level. For this reason the programs needed by administrators running single user were segregated and placed in /bin. The rest of the system could be left offline, useful when working on the rest of the system. As Unix grew, more and more utilities were added to /bin until it made sense to segregate it into those utilities needed when even a normal user might find themselves in single user mode vs a system administrator doing something dangerous. The super-user type programs now go in /sbin while the essential, but far less dangerous utilities go in /bin. Ordinary file copy is /bin/cp while the reboot command is /sbin/reboot. Some of the division look arbitrary to me, like /sbin/ping instead of /bin/ping, but there is probably logic behind it. [/usr and /var] Once booted up normally in multi-user mode, /usr contains system read-only content (for example, programs and libraries) and /var contains system content that is variable (like log files). The /usr directory is large and subsequently divided into a number of second level directories. [/usr/bin] This is where the rest of the Unix "binaries" (i.e. programs) reside. So while ls (the list directory command) is /bin/ls the c compiler resides in /usr/bin and is /usr/bin/gcc. [/usr/sbin] Like the division between /bin and /sbin more administrative commands not necessary for single user mode (see /sbin) are placed in /usr/sbin. For example, the command /usr/sbin/setquota used to set disk quotas on users is in /usr/sbin and not in /usr/bin. [/usr/lib] This is where Unix supplied software development libraries go. [/usr/include] This is where Unix supplied (predominantly C and C++) include files are placed. [/usr/share] System documentation, the man pages, and spelling dictionaries are examples of the files found in /usr/share. They are read-only files used by the system under normal (multi-user) operation. By now /usr/share is full of further subdivisions since many programs and systems need a place to put their read-only information. For example there is a /usr/share/cups for the Common Unix Printing System to store information about printers, etc. [/usr/local] System administrators may add additional local data and programs to their system. It make sense that these would be segregated from the rest of the files under /usr that come with Unix. The contents of /usr/local are local to the machine and are further subdivided into programs in /usr/local/bin and read-only data for these programs in /usr/local/share. [/usr/X11...] Once, one of the biggest subsystems in Unix was it's support for the graphical user interface known as the X window system. There were development libraries and include files, commands, man pages, and other executables. Rather than swamping the neat file hierarchy with these new files they were placed under a single subdirectory of /usr. You will probably not need to look at this very often. [/home] Users home directories are placed here; mine is /home/todd. Often /home is on a different physical partition so that it can be unmounted and a new version of the operating system can be installed without touching /home. [/tmp] Temporary files, for example that don't need to be backed up, are placed here. [/mnt] I've mentioned mounting and unmounting. Unix systems support a number of different filesystem formats, and devices can contain multiple filesystems (for example on distinct partitions). These filesystem become accessible once they are mounted into the hierarchy. Users need to temporarily (and now automatically) mount USB drives somewhere so that their files can be accessed via a pathname. In the past, users would just pick a directory to mount over. Now, it's traditional for temporary mounts to be placed in /mnt. [/dev] In Unix, low level access to devices is done through device drivers that support a number of file interfaces. Because they appear as special files they can be found under this directory. This is a convenience for programs because it makes naming and access to devices very similar to naming for ordinary files. [Finding out more information about Unix and its hierarchy] The Unix manual pages are a great resource. Originally, the manual was a physical book (I've still got a couple) divided into sections. Section 1 were the commands one might type on the command line. Now it is much easier to simply use the man command to access the exact same content. Use a terminal and enter "man ls", for example, to get all the information on the ls command to list directory contents. (You will be surprised at the number of options.) When you aren't sure of the command's name try the command "apropos" followed by a word you'd like to find the man page for. Passwords are an important subject so "apropos password" on my system lists 47 different manual pages for information on passwords. I see one listed as "passwd(1)". The (1) means it's section one so its about a command named "passwd", the command for changing your password. Here are the sections: (1) Commands (2) System calls (3) Library functions (4) Special files like device files (5) File formats (6) Recreations like games (7) Misc info (8) System admin and daemons If I was looking for the format of the password file I would enter the section number 5 as the first argument to the man command: "man 5 passwd". This would show me the documentation for the password file, /etc/passwd. Filesystem hierarchy manual page: "man 7 hier" or, since it is in only one section: "man hier". To find the name, "hier", of this man page one could have used the command "apropos filesystem". I hope this helps; it's probably too long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

digi_owl 9y ago

A little something to note, with the latest release there is a tool, Alien, that integrate language specific package managers with the Gobolinux directory tree. Meaning that downloads from cpan or similar will be placed in a sub-directory of /Programs and managed just like any other Gobolinux package. Right now perl, python, ruby, and lua are supported (afaik).

lproven 9y ago

I've occasionally played with Gobo for years now. I am delighted to see it coming back to life of late. One thing I've always thought would be ideal would be if either or both of the 2 Linux desktops that natively implement the idea of application-directories were top support Gobo app-dirs. Those 2 are GNUstep: http://www.gnustep.org/ http://www.gnustep.org/ ... and the ROX Desktop: http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/ http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/ GNUstep implements NeXTstep/macOS style app dirs: a top-level Appname.app folder with an OS X-like structure inside it. ROX Desktop implements Acorn RISC OS-style app dirs, called !Appname ... and containing a different but comparable layout.