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Aside from the sbin/bin merger, Gone are the sane embedded world where we kept /bin in unchangeable EEPROM, /usr/bin in site-wide admin-controlled, and /usr/loc
by egberts1 3y ago
Aside from the sbin/bin merger, Gone are the sane embedded world where we kept /bin in unchangeable EEPROM, /usr/bin in site-wide admin-controlled, and /usr/local where local admin roams and developers are left to their own device within the confine of $HOME/bin.
Too many developers wanting to mess with things is getting expoundingly worse; even worse, non-privileged developers still pushing to centralized things to a single point of failure.
We gray-beards lament the future and it is us.
- prmoustache 3y agoyour embedded system doesn't have to follow fedora, or any other major desktop distro.
- egberts1 3y agoCorrect, but will Linux? Pottering?
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoLinux doesn't care; it covers Fedora and Gobo and Android and NixOS alike. Pottering might do it, but... I dunno, does that affect embedded?
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoIt only does if the embedded developer wants it to. You can include systemd tools in your embedded release, but you don't have to. Just like you don't have to include GNU tools in your embedded Linux release.
- egberts1 3y agoThat's why I use Gentoo/Linux and portage.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoYocto or Buildroot are rather common for embedded Linux. They tend to be a bit easier for the mostly static embedded systems, where everything gets cross-compiled and distributed together. They also make it pretty simple to generate a manifest with all the licenses and attributions and source files needed for every package included in the build that's under an OSS license.
- pjmlp 3y agoLinux will fade away, split into dozen forks, when all its founders are long gone, and the replacements aren't bound by the same ideals. And a new generation of OSes that show some traces of UNIX influences will carry on. Just like Windows still carries CP/M and MS-DOS traces on it.
- dayjah 3y agoThe first time I was able to rescue a Solaris system due to the immutable statically linked /bin was a life saver. Now I fear for our futures!
- sph 3y agoAbsolute FUD nonsense. Actual greybeards know that the Linux kernel doesn't care if your binary is in /bin or /sbin, as long as you set up PATH accordingly. It's literally all you need to do. I do not see what you are complaining about where no one is stopping you from installing binaries anywhere and on any mount you want. When did greybeards expect to run user-friendly desktop distros on embedded devices, afraid of touching PATH? You are free to use anything else, or go LFS for ultimate customization, which is actually what I expect serious embedded devs to do.
- rcxdude 3y agoWhat world is that? The distinction has lacked meaning on linux for far longer than it has existed, as the subset in /bin /sbin and the /usr versions thereof don't form any useful subset of functionality.
- kazinator 3y agoIn embedded, most of the time everything in a base image (/bin and /usr/bin stuff, not to mention /sbin) will be flashed to a single partition. Secondly, Linux has something called overlayfs which you can use to build a sandwich any way you want. That is to say, the contents of your /usr/bin directory (and others) can simultaneously come from multiple partitions, some of which are writable, without the use of any symlinks. Overlayfs will merge things. With overlayfs, you can create an image that appears mutable, but is assembled out of read-only partitions.