[TUHS] Abstractions

[Henry Bent]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 16:03, Charles H. Sauer <sauer at technologists.com>
wrote:

> To add to the inventory below:
> Dell SVR4 /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin
> NEXTSTEP/486 3.3 /bin and /usr/bin are separate
>
> On 2/23/2021 1:37 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> > The recent discussions on the TUHS list of whether /bin and /usr/bin
> > are different, or symlinked, brought to mind the limited disk and tape
> > sizes of the 1970s and 1980s.  Especially the lower-cost tape
> > technologies had issues with correct recognition of an end-of-tape
> > condition, making it hard to span a dump across tape volumes, and
> > strongly suggesting that directory tree sizes be limited to what could
> > fit on a single tape.
> >
> > I made an experiment today across a broad range of operating systems
> > (many with multiple versions in our test farm), and produced these two
> > tables, where version numbers are included only if the O/S changed
> > practices:
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Systems with /bin a symlink to /usr/bin (or both to yet another common
> > directory) [42 major variants]:
> >
> >       ArchLinux               Kali                    RedHat 8
> >       Arco                    Kubuntu 19, 20          Q4OS
> >       Bitrig                  Lite                    ScientificLinux 7
> >       CentOS 7, 8             Lubuntu 19              Septor
> >       ClearLinux              Mabox                   Solaris 10, 11
> >       Debian 10, 11           Magiea                  Solydk
> >       Deepin                  Manjaro                 Sparky
> >       DilOS                   Mint 20                 Springdale
> >       Dyson                   MXLinux 19              Ubuntu 19, 20, 21
> >       Fedora                  Neptune                 UCS
> >       Gnuinos                 Netrunner               Ultimate
> >       Gobolinux               Oracle Linux            Unleashed
> >       Hefftor                 Parrot 4.7              Void
> >       IRIX                    PureOS                  Xubuntu 19, 20
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Systems with separate /bin and /usr/bin [60 major variants]:
> >
> >       Alpine                  Hipster                 OS108
> >       AltLinux                KaOS                    Ovios
> >       Antix                   KFreeBSD                PacBSD
> >       Bitrig                  Kubuntu 18              Parrot 4.5
> >       Bodhi                   LibertyBSD              PCBSD
> >       CentOS 5, 6             LMDE                    PCLinuxOS
> >       ClonOS                  Lubuntu 17              Peppermint
> >       Debian 7--10            LXLE                    Salix
> >       DesktopBSD              macOS                   ScientificLinux 6
> >       Devuan                  MidnightBSD             SlackEX
> >       DragonFlyBSD            Mint 18--20             Slackware
> >       ElementaryOS            MirBSD                  Solus
> >       FreeBSD 9--13           MXLinux 17, 18          T2
> >       FuryBSD                 NetBSD 6-1010           Trident
> >       Gecko                   NomadBSD                Trisquel
> >       Gentoo                  OmniOS                  TrueOS
> >       GhostBSD                OmniTribblix            Ubuntu 14--18
> >       GNU/Hurd                OpenBSD                 Xubuntu 18
> >       HardenedBSD             OpenMandriva            Zenwalk
> >       Helium                  openSUSE                Zorinos
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Some names appear in both tables, indicating a transition from
> > separate directories to symlinked directories in more recent O/S
> > releases.
> >
> > Many of these system names are spelled in mixed lettercase, and if
> > I've botched some of them, I extend my apologies to their authors.
> >
> > Some of those systems run on multiple CPU architectures, and our test
> > farm exploits that; however, I found no instance of the CPU type
> > changing the separation or symbolic linking of /bin and /usr/bin.
> >
>
>
Solaris /bin was a symlink to /usr/bin as early as 2.5.1.  It's also worth
pointing out that NetBSD, in addition to having a separate /bin and
/usr/bin, has /rescue which has a large selection of statically linked
binaries.

-Henry
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