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Disappointing? Sorry to read I've disappointed you, dear internet user. I've administered a lot of systems over the years, and they often contain tools I don't
by elric 4y ago
Disappointing? Sorry to read I've disappointed you, dear internet user. I've administered a lot of systems over the years, and they often contain tools I don't really know and didn't install. It's always much easier to look for things in the usual places, like logs in /var/log, instead of having to figure out where each random application decided dump its stuff.
I'm quite fond of the path of least surprises.
Splitting an installation across multiple locations has additional benefits. It's a good thing that the application user can't modify the binaries (which is pretty much enforced when the binaries live in /usr). You can achieve the same thing when dumping everything in /opt/$foo, but that's pretty much the worst of both worlds imo.
- drpyser22 4y agoWhat do you think about something like Nix/NixOS?
- mistrial9 4y agonot a *nix fan but professional computer science here; my limited understanding was that the Debian people took on their own methods of breaking things up and re-ordering them; there is no *nix standard despite multiple efforts at standards, only de-facto practices; powerful and arrogant people along with hurried and clueless people, repeatedly build setups that do not follow standards, as detailed in the post.
- IshKebab 4y ago> It's a good thing that the application user can't modify the binaries Why?
- noisem4ker 4y agoTo prevent damage from malware running with user privileges. If the user really needs to modify the binaries, they can reach out for sudo or ask the sysadmin. It's such a rare and risky use case that it warrants a barrier normally being in place.
- IshKebab 4y agoMalware running with user privileges on Unix can pretty much do whatever it wants already. > It's such a rare and risky use case that it warrants a barrier normally being in place. Users installing software is a rare use case? Ok.