Slashdot Mirror
SCO Is Undeniably, Reliably Dead (fossforce.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, IBM and SCO filed an agreement with the US district court in Utah to accept a ruling of dismissal of the last remaining claims by SCO against IBM. Says the linked article, in line with our most recent other mentions of the long-due death spiral:
This agreement wasn't unexpected, and in fact, came down right on deadline. On February 10, I reported that Judge David Nuffer with the U.S. District Court in Utah had ruled to dismiss a couple of interference claims SCO had filed against IBM, and had ordered both parties to reach an agreement on whether to accept the dismissal by February 26, which was Friday. In all likelihood this is the last we'll ever hear from SCO as its current owner, the California based software company Xinuos which now owns and markets many of SCO's old products, will probably remove what's left of SCO from life support.
In that case I make claim to all of linux.
Here we thought unicode support was just broken in comments and discussion, apparently it doesn't work anywhere here...
I know this came up in the discussion back on February 2 after someone accidentally bought slashdot, but apparently it still isn't that important a month later...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
March 2016, still UTF8 errors on /.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Where do I send my $99 licensing fee?
Trolling is a art,
And we owe this 30 year court battle over Linux to... copyright law! I'm sure we all feel glad our work is protected by such an efficient and fair system!
I can't believe this went on for so long. What is it, 14 years?
Anybody remember that 'We own all your code' picture?
I made a killing shorting their stock about 10 years ago when they first sued IBM. Too bad they aren't still around to do more stupid things I could make money from.
Has Netcraft confirmed it?
That is all.
I was wondering what's happening with the "XXX is for cows" comments... the only time it could be insightful the anonymous coward isn't making it...
I can't call that English
Why? If it's even vaguely profitable, what's the reason for not selling it anymore?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Generallisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Red Hat sued SCO in 2003 for false advertising, and that case was stayed pending resolution of the IBM case. Is that still pending (and can Red Hat try to get damages)?
Sure its not just pining for the fjords? Or maybe just stunned?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
(adopt high-pitched voice) ...and SCO's not only merely dead,
it's really most sincerely dead!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The SCO lawsuit started in 2003 and, in comparison, Unicode version 1.0 was released in 1992. So, it's not like this is a new standard, preceding the lawsuit by ten years. Unicode support in Linux seems to be around 1999.
I guess somebody at /. (or, more likely submitters) are getting a perverse kick out of copy and pasting unicode characters on the SCO article and I'm trying to figure out why. Maybe /. article editor tools make the unicode characters invisible to them but this has been going on long enough.
Timothy, et al, could you take this back to your new masters and get it fixed - one way or another? I, like probably a lot of people who come to this site, when we see the acronym "SCO" immediately look to see how many unicode characters are embedded in the summary.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Guess my Unixware and Openserver Master Ace is worthless now?
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I'm getting quite worried about the future of Linux. We're seeing numerous factors converging, and it's not looking good for Linux.
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market. Desktop environments like GNOME 3 and Unity are widely disliked. Systemd has caused stability issues for many. There's no compelling open source applications, and the ones that might be candidates, like Firefox or GIMP, pale in comparison to their main competitors.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS. Systemd has caused too many admins too many problems. The OpenSSL and Bash security woes have not helped. Now there are licensing questions about using ZFS with Linux. Meanwhile, we've seen OSes like FreeBSD and OpenBSD avoid many of these problems, or do a much better effort at prevent further problems.
We've also seen recent versions of Windows Server become much more appealing options. There are now very minimal versions available, and they're extremely usable and practical. Best of all, they allow the use of the .NET stack and C#, which are among the best around. Serious developers prefer to use C# and .NET instead of the more amateurish PHP platform that's so common on Linux.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software. Most Android users, and even many developers, wouldn't have any idea that Linux is involved, it's so well disguised.
So we see Linux having totally failed in the desktop/workstation segment of the market. It's faltering within the server segment. It's barely visible within the mobile segment. It's facing strong competition from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows and OS X. More and more people have found Linux's quality and robustness to be decreasing. And there's nothing to suggest that things will be improving for Linux any time soon.
I'm really worried about all of this. I really hope that things will turn around, but it all seems so uncertain to me at this point.
How do all the bad actors in this case just get to walk away?
Here we thought unicode support was just broken in comments and discussion, apparently it doesn't work anywhere here...
The strange thing is that the so-called "editors" don't filter out stuff that makes the text "break" in the presentation.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Similar scams.
Microsoft was behind scox scam, scox was just a pawn.
Now Microsoft has partnered with Red Hat, and declared that only Red Hat Linux is immune from Microsoft patent lawsuits.
So MS is still using IP scams to kill Linux. Instead of scox, MS is now partnering with Red Hat.
SCO = Supply Chain Optimization
As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead
Man it took him a long time to die.
Great summary to show off a couple of slashdot's worst issues: no unicode support for things as simple as quotes and useless "editing" that doesn't even correct the aforementioned obvious problem with the summary. /. overlords, are you "on it" as you claimed or not?
So, new
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
FTW!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
What SCO agreed to is dismissing remaining motions for summary judgment . This is more IBM agreeing there is no point delaying SCO's option of appealing the motions that went against them. It is still possible that SCO might try one last gasp effort in the appeals court. I am not sure how long they have before they must file such an appeal.
Is there a grave-stone we can dance on, and perform other bodily activities?
They made one for COBOL, although it was quite premature.
Table-ized A.I.
This bit here made me laugh way too fucking hard. Thanks damn_registrars - you've made my gloomy Tuesday a bit brighter :)
have you volunteered with any of the other distros? They're all going to systemd. With all the problems that could be fixed, init still isn't one of them. Installed Fedora just to see what it's like these days - my laptop starts up fast unless it crashes, but then I have to sit staring at it for a minute or so until the network port icon indicates it's finished. Yay! Hope I didn't want to bind any services to that IP...except, I'll actually do something about it, by going back to a system which doesn't use systemd. And I'll help out with that poettering-free system, and make my voice heard during planning. And want to blame someone? Blame Ubuntu for being the first to "solve" a problem that didn't exist.
tbh cleaning up advertising and making sure there is no malware in it seemed more important than unicode to me, too......I'll bet even Rei would agree.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Get an axe.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Uh, wow. So instead of systemd causing you a problem, it was NetworkManager. *slow clap*
The only time I've used NetworkManager was while I had BodhiLinux installed on a laptop that's since died. The damned thing would not reliably connect to the correct access point. I eventually just ripped NetworkManager out, configured wpa_supplicant, and it worked perfectly. Really, I should have just installed Gentoo, especially since I found an overlay that has a systemd-free Enlightenment E19. (Haven't seen whether or not E20 will compile as easily without systemd.)
I say compile, but I haven't typed "./configure && make && make install" in ages.
My Gentoo boxes are all still Poettering/RedHat-free. No systemd. No PulseAudio. No NetworkManager. I have a desktop, a wireless access point/IPv4 NAT/IPv6 router, and a server in the clouds all running Poettering-free Gentoo.
You deserve it!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why aren't Darl Mcbride and his cronies locked up in Club Fed for pump-n-dump scam they perpetuated?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market.
Nothing new there. It's going to be virtually impossible to push Windows out of this desktop market. It's simple network effects. Linux would have to offer something that isn't available on Windows that people care strongly about for people to switch. Unlikely that is going to happen. The only thing that linux has that Windows doesn't is that it is available for free. But until the applications they use are also available on linux AND it is installed from day 1 they aren't going to switch en-mass.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS.
Not really. Yes it has problems but that's nothing new and none of them are so awful that it's going to change the landscape. People that use Windows servers will mostly continue to do so and people that use linux servers will mostly continue to do so. There really aren't any other serious options for most use cases. BSD isn't really terribly different (porting software between them is trivial) and OS X isn't really used for servers.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software.
So what? That's nothing new either. Whether or not people are aware they are using linux is mostly not very important. Most people don't care so long as it does what they want. Whether or not they know it is open source is similarly immaterial. It's important that it be open source but awareness of it is a peripheral concern.
You may not believe it, but /. supported Unicode for probably over 15 years now.
Its just early abuse by posters destined to misuse it forced the implementation of a whitelist of acceptable UTF-8 characters, which basically are all the printables between 32 through 127. Everything else is effectively stripped. Since UTF-8 uses the high-bit to indicate that the codepoint consists of additional bytes,
(The Unicode support came as part of Slashdot.jp way back when.).
If you google for erocS or even 5:erocS, you can try to guess what the Unicode "fun" posters and trolls did that forced the implementation of the whitelist.
I will believe it when I see a picture of the stake through Darl's heart.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
My auntie that looks like a member of the Adams family.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Would the licensing fee happen to be around $699?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have thoroughly examined them,
And they are not just merely dead,
They are really quite sincerely dead.
more cowbell
Like a decent UI or privacy?
I'll presume you are being serious. Most people are familiar enough with Windows that anything other than a completely revolutionary gotta-have-it huge improvement isn't going to matter. If they haven't done it in 20 years I don't think we should reasonably expect it any time soon. Furthermore any such improvement could likely be easily copied by Microsoft in short order.
As for privacy, people clearly aren't too concerned with that. If you need evidence I refer you to Facebook as exhibit A. A few people care greatly about it but they are a tiny tiny minority. Most people don't care much about privacy as an abstract concept.
Neither of those things is going to cause people to switch who weren't already strongly inclined to switch anyway. The desktop PC battle is over and Microsoft won. However look at tablets and phones and Linux has a real opportunity there through Android. Tablets are making a huge dent in desktop PC sales and Android tablets are a big part of that.
But I'm a satanist, you insensitive clod.
> On March 6, 2003, the SCO Group (formerly known as Caldera International and Caldera Systems) filed a $1 billion lawsuit in the United States against IBM for allegedly “devaluing” its version of the UNIX operating system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp.
whipslash, if you're reading this, can you please investigate what walterbyrd is talking about? I too find it suspicious how systemd-related comments in this submission and others so often get modded down, even when they're completely on-topic, relevant, insightful and informative.
This is a case where anyone who modded down any of the systemd-related comments for this submission has committed mod abuse, should have all of the downmods they've ever made undone, and should be banned from ever moderating again. What they've done has harmed the discussion here, and that's inexcusable.
Is it what you say after a failed #kudatah?
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
€‘’öóíúüëéåäáßðfghïøñb®©£½¼¾÷¦”“ÖÓÍÚÜËÉÅÄÁÐFGHÏ‘B®ÆÆ
Then there are HTML entities like < ± — – and even & are in there.
If you're (or anyone else) curious as to how to input them, then hit reply and quote parent. Then you should see what goes into it. The first row is via keyboard input using AltGr keys and the second is via HTML. Not all HTML works, not all keyboard entry works. Quoting should reveal some of the ones that do not work.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm not quite sure when the trials started but they've been covering it, this whole thing, for longer than that.
http://slashdot.org/?page=56&v...
(I go through and look at old threads once in a while. I use the search fairly often for that.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
History should record that the whole SCO fiasco was the brain child of this scam artist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It was a patent submarine attack and one of history's ugliest. The guy is now the CEO of some company he made up in his garage. Check out this garbageL https://www.crowdfunder.com/sh... What a joke. He got what he deserved.
Did I miss something? How is this Ubuntu's fault? Unless I'm mistaken, isn't systemd from RedHat? Or are you mad that Ubuntu put it in their distro?
Serious questions - I'm thinking I missed something. I'd thought I understood everything that had gone on.
Hmm... I should add...
I do maintain a number of servers, including remote and colo hosted servers. I have a full rack (and a part of one) in my basement at home. Everything in there, at the bare metal level, runs Linux and I want to say all of them have systemd on them - but I'm not worried about enterprise-level results, yet I seem to get them. Barring intentional downtime, I have to be near the five nines with just my home equipment. (Home is solar powered and it's effectively a house-wide UPS with mains and a generator as a backup.)
I've never looked into it but I probably have better uptime at home than I do on colo stuff. Connectivity wouldn't be in the five nines, Home is in very, very rural NW Maine. I'm considering adding mobile connectivity as a fail-over and my uptime should hit those types of numbers. I've been away from home since September and have had zero unexpected downtime since I left. Even then, it has only been partially down, I can spin up a new VM pretty quickly.
Full disclosure: I don't actively hate systemd. I learned a few new commands and it has come in handy. I'm an admin but not a professional admin. I've paid attention to the angst about systemd and haven't actually learned to hate it. You indicate that this is Ubuntu's fault and I'm kind of curious as to why that is. I'm not sure how Ubuntu plays into it when (unless i'm missing something) RedHat is responsible for systemd.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That's great that Caldera, later rebranded as SCO, is dead. Now what about the actual perpetrators of that Linux debacle, Darl McBride and Chris Sonntag?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Did someone drive a stake through the body? Then burn it. Then drive a stake through the ashes and bury them. And then drive a stake through the ground where they were buried?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Illiterate Japs, or others?
What a huge waste... IBM's startup disks used to be Linux based. Boot, configure RAID, etc was all Linux. Now it's some stripped down Windows device code that takes 10 times longer to load, has less features and is less user friendly. ... pointless....
Micro$soft must have had a huge bounty up to get big blue to switch... all rendering this case rather
This was all Daryl McBride, former CEO of SCO. For a while, he was the most hated man on the internet. He was hitting every company he could find using Linux with a copyright infringement demanding payola. Many companies just paid to make it go away, Chrylser for example paid. There was a great website dedicated to this long painful process, I can't remember at the moment but some gal named Pam documented the entire process and translated the legaleze to English for the following techies.
The comment in question compares the relative damage of the SCO saga vs systemd issues. Although it's easy to get sidetracked from there I do think the comparison is a relevant contribution. SCO is often assumed to have been one of the biggest ever threats to Linux. Comparing it to the systemd situation, with relevant arguments and examples, puts the SCO story in perspective.
I for one agree with this perspective. I'm not a server admin myself but I was involved in our business decisions during the SCO "scare". There was never any question that we would pay a fee or drop Linux - it was always going to be business as usual. Other issues have had an impact though, and although we still use it for web servers we've since dropped Linux on most of our desktop computers. So in summary I think it is relevant to mention that there have always been bigger threats than SCO.
There's reasonable evidence, though not proof as far as I know, that Microsoft was bankrolling at least part of the case. You'd probably need to read back through Groklaw to find the reports of it though.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
where did I say Ubuntu was the first (big distro) with systemd? I said it was the first to solve that non-existent problem.
ps - just in case you weren't aware, upstart predates systemd by like, 4 years. And pss, I've been a UNIX admin for 20 years (well, I'm a bit past it now for a while). A fresh, unmolested install of a newbie distro (like fedora) shouldn't require effort to make it happy. That I'll be back to a from-scratch system sometime in a week or two is also irrelevant. The larger point is that one shouldn't just point the finger at redhat for this - pretty much all major distros are using systemd now. And your gentoo example (which I did use for a year or two, many years ago)? Also not using init anymore.
This is what you said:
Blame Ubuntu for being the first to "solve" a problem that didn't exist.
Wouldn't Redhat be the first? And, if not, are you saying that it solved a problem for RedHat?
What non-existent problem did Ubuntu fix?
I'm still, after all this time, trying to wrap my head around this. I was working on Unix systems back in the late starting at just about 1990. While I did administration duties, I'd still humbly submit that I am not an admin. It's a bit like I've written many lines of code but I am not a programmer. In both cases, I learned out of necessity and with the aid of many kind and knowledgeable people. I have absolutely no formal training in either but I do have a lot of hands-on.
I noticed your post was moderated troll. The thing is, I'm not really sure if your post *is* a troll. If that makes sense.
I see a lot of complaints with systemd but, in my experience, that's not borne out and some of the complaints seem a bit odd. Like the lack of binary logs. Err... You can not only output binary logs but you can still read them from another OS. I find journalctl to be pretty handy and the startup blame to be handy. You can even still use init scripts and I understand that they work exactly as they have for a long time. Don't ask me *how* to do that, I've not needed to look into it. I have it on good authority that it's not only doable, it's just like it was before.
I mostly learned a few new commands and moved on. I've had no system instability. I've had no problems. But...
I am *not* a professional administrator. I am not administrating 5,000 servers. Lemme count.... Only servers? Only bare metal? I maintain 23. I think... All of them Linux, varied distros. I think all the bare metal have systemd on them. I'm pretty sure at any rate - a quick bit of SSH tells me that this is so for the first half dozen.
Oh, I've had problems. I just recently reconverted to using Linux exclusively, including on the desktop. I used Windows for a long time, I was even an MS MVP award winner for like 6 or 7 years (in various categories) and I'm actually kind of OS agnostic. I not only don't really care what other people use, I'm not all that particular about what I'll use. I'll even use OS X if I gotta.
But, yes... I've had problems. I've had loads of problems over the years. I may not be a diagnostic expert but, as near as I can tell, none of them stem from systemd. If anything, systemd has helped me - on multiple occasions.
So, I'm not sure I follow... What non-existent problem was Ubuntu the first to fix and why is RedHat not the first if they were the first ones to incorporate it?
In your other post, you referenced a comment that I made about Gentoo. I didn't mention Gentoo? Given that spell check is flagging it as an incorrect word, and knowing my own proclivities, I'm inclined to think that I've never mentioned Gentoo. I don't use it. I do have it in a VM somewhere but it's not spun up. I'm also not sure about the upstart comment. I'm wondering if you've confused me with someone else at this point.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
do you not get context? systemd, talk about doing it just to speed up boot time, yet I'm still waiting on my system to initialize anyway (regardless whether I have a desktop screen, it's worthless without a network). Do you not remember what init is, or does that simply predate you?
Sep 14, 2007
http://www.unixresources.net/linux/clf/linuxtalk/archive/00/00/65/85/658554.html
"Stick a fork in SCO. They're done."
Nov 24, 2008
http://www.cnet.com/news/ding-dong-sco-is-dead/
"Ding, dong SCO is dead"
Apr 14, 2011 ..."
http://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-is-dead-sco-unix-lives-on/
"SCO is dead
Aug 13, 2011
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/SCO-vs-Linux-it-s-over-1333900.html
"SCO vs Linux: it's over"
Aug 8, 2012
http://www.zdnet.com/article/sco-is-finally-dead-parrot-dead/
"SCO is finally 'Dead Parrot' Dead"
Aug 8, 2012
http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/is-linux-nemesis-sco-finally-dead-now.html
"Is Linux Nemesis SCO *FINALLY* Dead Now?"
Feb 29, 2016
http://fossforce.com/2016/02/sco-is-undeniably-and-reliably-dead/
"SCO Is Undeniably and Reliably Dead"
Oh no, I'm well aware of what init is. You can still use your init scripts, or so I'm told. I've never tried, I've never needed to. At any rate, init is a daemon that starts with the system. I want to say it has PID 1 but I suppose it might be 0 in some systems.
Maybe I'm not getting this "context" or anything but I'm starting to think it might not be my fault. That's not actually a very articulate answer and doesn't actually answer any of the questions.
What was Ubuntu first to fix that didn't need fixing? If it was Ubuntu who first fixed a non-problem with systemd then RedHat's usage must have fixed an existing problem seeing as they did it first and it wasn't a non-problem. I can only go by what you said were your positions. You are quite adamant that Ubuntu is to blame for having done this first and this first was fixing a non-problem. Except, well... RedHat did it first and that must have been a real problem that they fixed? That's what's remaining, unless I'm missing another option in there.
I must be missing something.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Ah - I think I've got you. upstart! Ubuntu wrote and included upstart. I'm not sure that worked well - ever.
Alright, so you're angry that they changed the initialization system? Hmm... Okay, why?
I guess I'd be angry if it were forced on me. I guess, technically, it isn't. I'm kind of annoyed that it's now decided to include far more than the init system - there's no reason for it to be more than that - that's annoying but, so far so good.
But, it's not like it's the first alternative? There's launchd, busybox, SMF (I'm most familiar with that and I think there's a port to Linux?), SystemStarter, etc..
Why not rip it out and put it in there on your own? I guess it might be a bit of work but if there are enough angry people then it's likely some of them know what they're doing well enough to lend a hand? I think (don't quote me on this) Slackware's not systemd yet - or it wasn't the last time I looked.
At any rate, what I'm not seeing is any problems - at all - here. That surely doesn't mean you're not having problems. I've just not seen any. What's up with your config that you're having issues? How often do you have these problems?
Err... If I had to make a wild-ass guess, and I get to count VMs but only VMs that get spun up on a regular basis, I'm gonna take a stab at it and guess that I've probably got 100 or so installs. I realize that's nothing compared with however many you might have to deal with. But, it's on some very varied hardware and doing lots of interesting things. I've had zero issues with systemd itself.
That's not meant to discount your problems or concerns, but meant as an indicator to show why I'm kind of baffled as to what people are doing. 'Cause you're not in the majority - as near as I can tell. I guess I'd complain most about them wrapping more and more things into it and the likelihood that systemd may eat away at developer time and the resulting monoculture more difficult for those wishing to avoid systemd, for whatever reasons they might have.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There is always the fact the Windows security is abysmal.
Which again is something people clearly don't care much about. Certainly not enough to switch to linux. And it's not as if the security on linux devices is universally bullet proof. It's better than Windows in many ways (talk about damning with faint praise...) but there are still plenty of security issues. Outside of certain security conscious organizations (like the DoD), security is a second or third order consideration.
The DoD has been replacing Windows for mission critical systems for some years now.
I could point out plenty of organizations that have found linux to be a better solution for their particular needs than Windows. Wall street is making pretty heavy use of linux too. That said, Windows still has somewhere around 90%+ of the desktop market and somewhere around 30% of the server market and those numbers have held steady for quite some time. Anecdotal stories of particular organizations (even large ones) switching doesn't tell us anything very useful. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of linux. Merely pointing out that it simply isn't going to win the fight on the desktop against Windows and that Windows isn't capturing meaningful market share from linux on servers.
That's the thing - the people who don't understand what the problem is - and this is absolutely not meant as an insult in any way - don't *understand* what the problem is. They don't get that the whole community, and UNIX in general, was founded on KISS. I should be able to start in single user mode, and step through each thing along the way until the thing that breaks breaks, and fix it. But I can't really do that anymore - sure, systemd is ignorable when everything is working, but when it isn't, then one has to wonder why the 1 second I saved on bootup was necessary. Further - I'm not angry at anything. I'm simply saying that blaming Redhat for systemd is silly, when they weren't the first major distro to replace init (not by a long shot) and it's not like every other major distro hasn't also done the same now. Init wasn't broken, but the replacements are - they don't behave properly, LP is an ass, they break fundamental principles of the community, they make things complicated what should be simple, they decrease stability, they make things more complicated, and all to...make bootup a second or two faster. Err...what why huh? Now I can't even have a functional system unless I've mounted /usr, and sometimes even /var, of all things. Bloody hell, why? Not everything needs to be Windows, where things work at a basic level but can't be troubleshot deeply if anything goes wrong - if the tradeoff to not needing experts is to make something even experts can't easily fix, then you've only lost out, not gained.