Filesystem - hiding system folders?

[Peter Garrett]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:22:24 +1200
"Jason Taylor" <killerkiwi2005 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Stuff like Scribus's template files, OpenClipart libraries, the GIMP manual
> > & userguides, abs-guide and lots of other useful stuff gets installed into
> > rootspace because it has to go somewhere, and it needs to be available.
> 
> Shoot me down if im wrong here, but shouldnt all this stuff be going
> into a set location like
> /usr/share that way we could just hide everything 'but' that location?

Why are people so keen on hiding things? One of the things that I
particularly like about Linux is the very fact that things are *not*
hidden.

Is it possible that we are underestimating users, and that hiding stuff is
kind of insulting?

On OS-X for example, the "Unix" file system is mangled in a way that just
makes it harder to get at functionality. For example, try setting NFS up
on Mac OS-X with an editor and commandline, then compare the same task on
Linux.

I'm all in favour of making good GUI tools - but I genuinely find it
puzzling when people make the assumption that users are intimidated by a
quite logical file system structure...



 -- Peter Garrett