Getting rid of /usr for F12?

[Andrew Haley]

Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Fri, 17.04.09 06:48, Ralf Corsepius (rc040203 at freenet.de) wrote:
> 
>> Lennart Poettering wrote:
>>> Heya,
>>>
>>> there's one topic that keeps popping up in various discussions: can't
>>> we get rid of /usr? The seperation of / and /usr doesn't make much
>>> sense anymore.
>> This is a very short-sighed view.
> 
> Oh, is it?
> 
>>> We could make /usr a symlink to / for an interims phase
>>> and everything would be good for conservative folks who think the FHS
>>> is the holy bible.
>> Religiousity isn't the point - The point is: There are reasons for why  
>> the FHS rsp. the GNU standards are setup the way they are.
> 
> First of all FHS is not a "GNU standard". 
> 
> Secondly, it is of course very convincing if you just nebulously say
> 'there are rasons' instead of mentioning any.

Well, sometimes the fact that something *is* standard is far more important
than what the standard is.  And /usr has been around for a very long time,
and lots of software (an people, for that matter) know that it's there.
Much of the GNU configured software by default installs in /usr/local.
There has to be a very high bar for changing common practice.

Andrew.