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GoboLinux Rethinks The Linux Filesystems
dolbywan_kenobi writes "GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy. In GoboLinux we have paths such as /Programs/XFree86/4.3/ and /System/Settings/BootScripts/Reboot." By design, GoboLinux is quite a bit different from most Linux distributions, and -- notably -- is a live ISO, always nice.
Anything to make Linux easier is a plus, however there is one Windows and many, many Linux distros, this is like dividing the cause. However it does provide for far more flexibility and doesn't lock you into any one company.
in other locales will the directory structure still be in english?
Now would anyone care to guess how many knee-jerk posts there will be, like "if you like a sane directory hierarchy, use OS X, ya weenie!" or "if it's not broke, don't fix it!" To which I respond, where do you keep your Mozilla plugins?
Much applause to the guys who were willing to think a little more critically about what we can do to make Linux just a little better.
I know the unix file hierarchy well, but I've always thought it was arranged haphazardly. Why are there six different places for system executables? (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin,/usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin)? That's not even counting the alternative directories that some programs like to be installed under like /opt, or X11 programs.
The one thing I don't like is that they renamed root to gobo. While root doesn't have much inherent meaning to it, gobo has even less. If you're going to rename root, why not pick something more meaningfull like administrator, admin, superuser, BigManWithTheTopHat, etc? I guess I haven't checked recently, but is linux still limited to 8 characters for the username?
AccountKiller
This is, actually, C:\Documents and Settings\user
/etc directory I'm sure. Is it in it's own subdirectory? Possibly! Let's go and see.
/Programs/XFree86/4.3 .. oh look, everything X installed.) Yeah, that could get confusing. Therefore there might be a bin directory, a config directory, and a data directory. They can all be symlinks, I don't care, but if I had to come up with where KDE stores it's default menu, I would have no f*cking clue. Somewhere in /usr I guess? Might depend on the distro.. Agh.
Where the hell are you people getting this BS about it being in the windows directory?! It wasn't there in w2k. I should know, I'm running it right now. It's not there in XP (Professional). I should know, the computer next to me is running it.
That being said, the linux file system structure SUCKS! Windows isn't much better, but christ.. especially with the distros. Where is your config file for samba? Well, I don't quite know. It's somewhere in the
Having all the stuff AT LEAST symlinked from some common directory would be SO NICE. (cd
Personally, I think it sounds like a great idea. If you're putting together a desktop system, there's really no need to carry around the old UNIX cruft. Honestly. And as much as the fanboys jizz all over OS X, I'd think this would be a welcome change. I suppose if this came with a system capable of real translucency and drop shadows, the l33t boyz would be jizzing instead of bitching, eh?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
During the 80s, the UNIX with the biggest user base was... XENIX (made by none other than Microsoft), which was later sold to SCO, and which was one of the systems used as a basis for the POSIX standard. NT (and, subsequently, W2K and XP) does comply with a big chunk of the POSIX standard (I suspect one of the reasons was to make it easier to port software from Xenix to NT - Microsoft didn't want to lose market share to the other UNIXes). In some ways, though, NT is closer to VMS than to XENIX.
D =97&ArticleID=4500
D =97&ArticleID=449
Two old but interesting articles about the evolution of NT:
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueI
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueI
NTFS has other nice features such as symbolic links, named streams, non-continuous files, etc.. I learned a few tricks a couple of years ago in a newsgroup discussion from a guy working at Microsoft. Some of these features appear to be completely undocumented (or at least the documentation is very well hidden).
RMN
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