Actually, I DO remember the first time I saw a Unix filesystem. It was on FreeBSD. And it DID make sense. When I switched to Debian not long later, there was this document that eventually became the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). It clearly spelled out where things lived, and in Debian non-compliance with the FHS was a bug (and once the notion of a release-critical bug was invented in Debian, it was a release-critical bug.)

Part of the problem here is that we are in a twisty little maze and every passage looks alike, and our flashlight ran out of batteries in 2013. The manpages, to the extent they exist for things like cgmanager and polkit, describe the texture of the walls in our little cavern, but don't give us a map to the cave. Therefore we are each left to piece it together little bits at a time, but there are traps that keep moving around and it is slow going.

Add to the the fact that it's a damn big cave.

I could understand the FHS in about 10 minutes. This stuff? Would probably take weeks.

The order of magnitude of complexity is entirely different. It came out in the comments on my post that Fedora finally threw up their hands, and the reason that Wifi works out of the box there is because they just expose all wifi passwords to all users of the box. Whoops. Could you have known that by looking at the permissions with ls? Nope. You'd have to read some XML file in a location that network-manager never mentions.

I didn't shut down all systemd talk. Just the stuff that was flamebait. What you didn't see is the comments that I deleted, which degenerated exceptionally quickly into namecalling and four-letter words. I am happy to tolerate many viewpoints on my personal blog as long as they are expressed with respect. I have seen sooooo many threads, whether here or elsewhere, start with statements like the one there. That post was on a technical matter, and things that are verifiably false and rehash the way a systemd decision was made were both off-topic and non-respectful.

There are a lot more systemd comments on the post, by the way. Some pro, some against.

"Systemd is a problem because..." was fine. "forced upon us" is a completely different discussion that is still highly-charged, produces nearly instant flamewars, and I didn't want to go there (yesterday).

My blog is my own little corner of the Internet where I try to raise the level of discourse just a bit. It's fighting a tidal wave, but I do try.

Exactly. So there are never non-binary scripts in /bin, right? And if I install a vanilla Linux install without any additional installations, than /usr will be completely empty because it's only for user-installed programs. Well, and their "supporting stuff", which can be damned near anything.

And then some things go into "opt", because fuck you that's why.

Honestly, you're not even arguing with me. People don't need to know what /etc is, and if you know enough to mess around in /etc, then you'll probably know enough to know what's in there. But again, that says nothing about whether the name of it makes sense. Your argument boils down to "It's what we're used to, and we know what it is, so it's fine." And I say again, that's a fine argument. Just drop the nonsense in claiming that it's clean, logical, and well thought out.

And I'm just talking about one simple little factor of the design-- directory naming structure. There's lots of messiness and nonsense. We just usually ignore it and forget about it in favor of maintaining conventions and compatibility.

Right, so what you're saying is, I'm already used to it, so it's fine. That was kind of my point. It's not a sensible layout, but you're used to it.

And don't give me this crap about "just because someone 'doesnt like how it looks'." It's not about how it looks. It's about sensible design. When you're designing something like this, you should basically make some attempt to put things where an knowledgeable person would expect them to be. In the case of directory structures, this translates into something like, "Show the list of directories to someone who doesn't know the directory tree, and have them guess where things go." What goes into "dev" vs. "etc" vs. "bin" vs. "sbin"?

And sure, you can say that it doesn't really matter what things are called and how things are organized, since people can always learn the weird, confusing, obscure directory structure. And that's a fine argument. But then don't give me this nonsense about the setup being, "clean, logical, well put-together, and organized." It's basically a bunch of kludge to maintain compatibility.

No arrow keys, no side numeric keypad? Not interested.

Sounds like a bunch of teatotaller biased bullshit.

Don't even drink any more, but this is stupid. Thinning your blood minorly once per day has got to be good for your heart rather than it pounding full strength all the time.

Whatever, this is nonsense. Next they'll say vaccines are bad for you...

This world is turning stupider by the second.

You would only say that because you were used to the previous organization. It has always been a mess of "catering to old UNIX paradigms" while also "trying to squeeze in the latest new thing." Old UNIX guys have always complained whenever the GNU tools had a different behavior from what they were used to, including changes that you take for granted. Bash was once new, and some people still don't like it.

Do you remember the first time you saw a UNIX filesystem? Think back. You have directories like etc, usr, and var. "usr" doesn't really contain user information. "etc" doesn't include miscellaneous files. "var"? WTF is "var"?

None of that shit ever made sense. It's what you were used to. If we set out today to make a sensible, orderly, logical, clean system, it would not look like modern Linux, and it would not look like old Linux.

And then you look up that error message, and oh, "0xFF0SUX2BU" is the error code indicating that "the operation failed for some reason."

That's why, IMO, Microsoft should go the Google route. They should make Windows free (maybe even Libre), and try to make their money from server software and services. Charge for Office 365, including MS Office, Storage for OneDrive, InTune, Exchange, etc. Create a consumer-focused version of InTune/Office 365-- sort of like iCloud. Continue charging for Windows Server, Exchange, and Sharepoint for business use. Use Windows for desktops/laptops/tablets/mobile as a loss-leader platform that enables them to deliver those services.

It's a bit risky, but I think it's they'll be forced into it within a few more years anyway, and they'd be smart to go that direction before they're dragged in that direction.

Well I think they actually would be very smart to have a rolling release, or somehow encouraging everyone to go up to Windows 10 ASAP. Yes, some of the reason for that would be so that they can give users the features they want, and promote services they'd like to support. The bigger issue is support. I think one of the smartest things that Apple has done in recent years is to make OSX upgrades free. It means that unless you have legacy hardware that's unsupported, there's no reason not to move to the most recent version. That means you don't have to spend as much time and money supporting those old versions. If everyone running Windows XP could have upgraded to Windows 7 at no cost (and without a significant slowdown on the system), then you would have heard a lot less bitching and moaning when Microsoft discontinued support for a 12 year-old operating system.

The problem is, if Microsoft wants to achieve this rolling release by way of subscriptions, they're going to make a lot of people pretty angry. So personally, I think free is a smarter move.

Also-- and I've made this argument many times before-- the OS shouldn't be something that expires. The "subscription" that you're talking about, IIRC, was "Software Assurance" which includes support and free upgrades, but Windows XP wouldn't suddenly stop working if you chose not to renew your subscription.

The rumor regarding this is that Microsoft has been planning a subscription version of Windows where, if you stop paying, your computer stops working. To my mind, that's unacceptable. Next thing you know, HP is going to start shipping subscription printer drivers that stop working if you don't pay their $5/month ransom, or your Smart TV will require a $5 subscription to keep the OS working. If you buy a hardware product, and the hardware vendor includes software because, in their opinion, without that software, your hardware will be useless, then that software should not expire.

I met Weird Al after I saw him on TV...

I'm going to make a purely libertarian argument that in this case, murder-for-hire was justified:

Libertarianism is the belief that one should never initiate force or fraud. So given that:
1. If Fred is a robber and points a gun at Bob's Family, then Bob is justified in killing Fred.
2. If Dave witnesses the above scene, then Dave is justified in killing Fred, because Fred is the one that initiated force.
3. If Fred credibly threatens to kill Bob's Family in the future, and the only way to prevent that is for Dave to kill Fred, then Dave is justified in killing Fred.
4. If Fred's credible threat is not to kill Bob's family, but to kidnap them, then Dave is still justified in killing Fred.
5. If Fred's credible threat is to hire Gino to do the kidnapping, then Dave is still justified in killing Fred. Dave is also justified in killing Gino, because now Gino is also initiating force.

In the case of the Silk Road trial, "Dave" is DPR/Ross Ulbricht, Gino is the government, Fred is Frieldlychemist, and Bob's Family are the peaceful dealers and customers of Silk Road.

Yep, it's really that simple. Life is a binary equation.