Ubuntu should move all binaries to /usr/bin/

[Michael Loftis]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> nick rundy [2011-11-01 15:01 -0400]:
>> I came to ubuntu from Windows. And one thing Windows does well is make it easy to find an executable file (i.e., it's in C:\Program Files\)
>
> In fact, Windows makes that really hard, as there is no standard
> location for binaries. Each application ships its executables in its
> own directory.

+1 to this.  Unixen in general are much more consistent.  User level
binaries shipped with the base system go in /bin, system level (eg
root type stuff) /sbin.  Additional packages not part of the base
system belong in the /usr/bin and /usr/sbin locations, any package not
following that needs fixing, not breaking *EVERYTHING* in the world so
that "all bins are in the same dir" -- since they already are supposed
to be.

Just *TRY* to find all the executable binaries for say MS Office.  Now
how about DLLs?  Yeah, good luck with that.

>
>> Finding an executable file in Ubuntu is frustrating & lacks
>> organization that makes sense to users.
>
> I doubt that many users actually care, and those wo do can use
> "which". Also. all binaries a user is actually concerned with are in
> /usr/bin (i. e. the ones you'd call to open documents with).
>
>> Here's a link to an article that talks about Fedora's idea:
>> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Fedora-considers-moving-all-binaries-to-usr-bin-1369642.html?view=print
>
> That would mean that we need to drop the possibility to have /usr on a
> separate partition/network file system, or make the initramfs
> clever/complicated enough to actually wait for /usr to come up.
>
> Also, the separation of /sbin and /usr/sbin is not just totally
> random; for non-admin users it makes them not appear in tab completion
> etc, which cleans up the command namespace a bit.

Another +1.

-- 

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into trouble of all kinds."
-- Samuel Butler