3 ms·

Sigh ... gobolinux solved this quite elegantly over 20 years ago, and to this day most folks don't quite grok how simple and elegant their solution was.

by isr 5y ago

smcl 5y ago
What was the solution, and why is is simple and elegant?
- chalst 5y ago
  There's a rather old review on LWN: https://lwn.net/Articles/66290/ https://lwn.net/Articles/66290/ It's essentially like Macos's /Applications directory, except where Macos supports the traditional POSIX fhs via a hidden /private root directory, Gobolinux hides these directories with a filesystem kludge.
  - smcl 5y ago
    Nice, thanks! I'll give this a little read over lunch :)
    - 0des 5y ago
      I recently did something similar refactoring XDG endpoints to get rid of the standard home layout. I was quite surprised everything just worked, and there wasn't an issue of directories being recreated in their original locations or file templates being missing. Quite liberating if you ask me.
Saint_Genet 5y ago
Having potentially hundreds of copies of popular shared libraries on disk isn't particularly elegant when you find a bug in those libraries
- rnhmjoj 5y ago
  I'm sure how you're getting to this conclusion. GoboLinux filesystem hierarchy just separates executables and shared objects by name and version [1]; unlike the standard FHS where everything goes into /usr/lib, /usr/bin, etc. For backward compatibility there are symlinks (that takes no disk space) to the standard directories, but these are hidden by the kernel so they don't show up and clutter your file manager. [1]: https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html [2]: https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/gobohide.html https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/gobohide.html
makeitdouble 5y ago
From the Gobolinux homepage > /bin is a link to /System/Index/bin. And as a matter of fact, so is /usr/bin. And /usr/sbin So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ? Issues seen on Debian are not the system using symlinks or not, but packages failing when exchanged between system that still had both /bin/ and /usr/bin as separate directories, as it was historically, and the new merged systems. Gobolinux being a from scratch built distro with no transition history, I am not sure how it can be seen as a better example here.
- isr 5y ago
  > So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ? No. * https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html * https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html I'll just copy & paste from earlier posts I made on a gobolinux-related thread some time ago (can't be bothered to rewrite the same arguments in different words) "Anyone who wants to try out gobolinux for real would at least do some basic reading first. Its that distinct a distro that you kind of have to, and no problems with that. Not everything innovative can be expected to be digested without a modicum of work up front. ... Sometimes the simplest alternative implementations require the most up-front understanding, because their simplicity challenges long-held preconceptions about how things should be. Thats Gobo in a nutshell. At its heart, its actually a very simple distro. Which uses simple tools, and the filesystem, to lay everything bare in front of the user. Funnily enough, Gobo is one of the few distros where you can refer to /bin/<any-linux-executable>, and as long as actually have that pkg installed (yes, under /Programs), then /bin/xyz WILL be found. Guaranteed. Thats by design." And: "The kernel module that hides the standard dirs under / is entirely optional, and is only there for aesthetic purposes. If you don't want it, don't load it. Absolutely nothing in gobolinux requires that kernel module to be running. Again, its just purely for aesthetic purposes."

Sigh ... gobolinux solved this quite elegantly over 20 years ago, and to this day most folks don't quite grok how simple and elegant their solution was.

by isr 5y ago

Sigh ... gobolinux solved this quite elegantly over 20 years ago, and to this day most folks don't quite grok how simple and elegant their solution was.

smcl 5y ago

What was the solution, and why is is simple and elegant?

chalst 5y ago
There's a rather old review on LWN: https://lwn.net/Articles/66290/ https://lwn.net/Articles/66290/ It's essentially like Macos's /Applications directory, except where Macos supports the traditional POSIX fhs via a hidden /private root directory, Gobolinux hides these directories with a filesystem kludge.
- smcl 5y ago
  Nice, thanks! I'll give this a little read over lunch :)
  - 0des 5y ago
    I recently did something similar refactoring XDG endpoints to get rid of the standard home layout. I was quite surprised everything just worked, and there wasn't an issue of directories being recreated in their original locations or file templates being missing. Quite liberating if you ask me.

Saint_Genet 5y ago

Having potentially hundreds of copies of popular shared libraries on disk isn't particularly elegant when you find a bug in those libraries

rnhmjoj 5y ago
I'm sure how you're getting to this conclusion. GoboLinux filesystem hierarchy just separates executables and shared objects by name and version [1]; unlike the standard FHS where everything goes into /usr/lib, /usr/bin, etc. For backward compatibility there are symlinks (that takes no disk space) to the standard directories, but these are hidden by the kernel so they don't show up and clutter your file manager. [1]: https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html [2]: https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/gobohide.html https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/gobohide.html

makeitdouble 5y ago

From the Gobolinux homepage > /bin is a link to /System/Index/bin. And as a matter of fact, so is /usr/bin. And /usr/sbin So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ? Issues seen on Debian are not the system using symlinks or not, but packages failing when exchanged between system that still had both /bin/ and /usr/bin as separate directories, as it was historically, and the new merged systems. Gobolinux being a from scratch built distro with no transition history, I am not sure how it can be seen as a better example here.

isr 5y ago
> So, they're doing exactly the same thing as Debian is doing on the default merged configuration ? No. * https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html * https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html I'll just copy & paste from earlier posts I made on a gobolinux-related thread some time ago (can't be bothered to rewrite the same arguments in different words) "Anyone who wants to try out gobolinux for real would at least do some basic reading first. Its that distinct a distro that you kind of have to, and no problems with that. Not everything innovative can be expected to be digested without a modicum of work up front. ... Sometimes the simplest alternative implementations require the most up-front understanding, because their simplicity challenges long-held preconceptions about how things should be. Thats Gobo in a nutshell. At its heart, its actually a very simple distro. Which uses simple tools, and the filesystem, to lay everything bare in front of the user. Funnily enough, Gobo is one of the few distros where you can refer to /bin/<any-linux-executable>, and as long as actually have that pkg installed (yes, under /Programs), then /bin/xyz WILL be found. Guaranteed. Thats by design." And: "The kernel module that hides the standard dirs under / is entirely optional, and is only there for aesthetic purposes. If you don't want it, don't load it. Absolutely nothing in gobolinux requires that kernel module to be running. Again, its just purely for aesthetic purposes."