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What about the reinterpreting of "usr" from "user" to "unix system resources" after Unix overflowed the original 1.5 MB OS drive on Thompson and Richie's PDP-7?

What about the reinterpreting of "usr" from "user" to "unix system resources" after Unix overflowed the original 1.5 MB OS drive on Thompson and Richie's PDP-7? > "The /bin vs /usr/bin split (and all the others) is an artifact of this, a 1970's implementation detail that got carried forward for decades by bureaucrats who never question _why_ they're doing things. It stopped making any sense before Linux was ever invented" - http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...

blueflow 3y ago
The term "UNIX System Resources" for /usr is documented no earlier than 2003. This is about 30 years after the events you refer to.
PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
In the state of immutable distros that use a modern image format (so not Android), /usr is read only and managed by the system only anyway. imho we should go the entire way and move /home to /var/home, so anything other than /etc and /var can be read-only, I already place /var on a separate partition with /var/home on RHEL installs.
- NekkoDroid 3y ago
  fun fact: you can already have almost everything except /var/ and /home/ read-only (there are still some legacy problems in /etc/, namely passwd, shadow, group... that I think userdbd can handle, but are there because of backwards compat). You can add to /etc/ by using systemd-confexts and overlaying files onto there (and systemd-sysext for /usr/). ~~Tho you have to choose the software you run somewhat carefully~~ Lets rather say, the infrastructure is already mostly there for this to be possible. I'd love to have a way to have root really only be a read-only tmpfs that is only used for mount points (specifically /usr/, /var/ and /home/) and symlinks (for example /var/home/ to /home/ if no separate partition is wanted).
  - nurple 3y ago
    Impermanence is an interesting take on this using NixOS https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence

blueflow 3y ago

The term "UNIX System Resources" for /usr is documented no earlier than 2003. This is about 30 years after the events you refer to.

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago

In the state of immutable distros that use a modern image format (so not Android), /usr is read only and managed by the system only anyway. imho we should go the entire way and move /home to /var/home, so anything other than /etc and /var can be read-only, I already place /var on a separate partition with /var/home on RHEL installs.

NekkoDroid 3y ago
fun fact: you can already have almost everything except /var/ and /home/ read-only (there are still some legacy problems in /etc/, namely passwd, shadow, group... that I think userdbd can handle, but are there because of backwards compat). You can add to /etc/ by using systemd-confexts and overlaying files onto there (and systemd-sysext for /usr/). ~~Tho you have to choose the software you run somewhat carefully~~ Lets rather say, the infrastructure is already mostly there for this to be possible. I'd love to have a way to have root really only be a read-only tmpfs that is only used for mount points (specifically /usr/, /var/ and /home/) and symlinks (for example /var/home/ to /home/ if no separate partition is wanted).
- nurple 3y ago
  Impermanence is an interesting take on this using NixOS https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence