GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy
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https://fosspost.org/2017/01/22/gobolinux-a-linux-distribution-with-new-filesystem-hierarchy/
There are many different Linux distributions out there. Thousands of them are designed to meet different purposes (no matter how small the difference from each one). Today, we would like to introduce GoboLinux for you.
GoboLinux is a special Linux distribution which is built from scratch. It offers an alternative filesystem hierarchy. To clarify this, we all know that the common Unix hierarchy includes directories like /usr, /bin, /etc.. But that’s not the case in GoboLinux. For example the filesystem directories here are:
- /System: The system files, binaries and kernel and placed here.
- /Programs: All programs are inserted in this directory. Each program has its own folder which contains its own settings, files and data. Multiple versions of the same program can be installed easily, because each version contains its own files sepearted from the other version.
- /Users: The home folders for the system users (root and all others) are listed here. It’s like /home in Unix hierarchy.
- /Data: The data folder contains information about packages and recipes needed by the system. It also includes the “Variable” folder. Which is actually /var.
- /Mount: Mounting directory if needed. Just like normal /mnt.
From the developers point of view1), this new hierarchy is a much better design for a filesystem. It keeps everything “categorized” which allows files to be preserved in these categories easily. To maintain the backwards compatibility with Unix hierarchy, a lot of symlinks are used to point to the directories on GoboLinux. For example if you run cd /etc it will take you to /System/Settings. Thus, there’s no need to modify the applications to work on the new way of categorizing these files......
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Sounds like GoboLinux is mimicking Windows. Or at least going for a more user friendly file system.
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
Sounds like GoboLinux is mimicking Windows. Or at least going for a more user friendly file system.
Well, Windows is less user friendly than Linux, by far. Different hierarchy for each device, no clear connection of devices, users have to know under the hood details, multiple hierarchies, multiple locations for many things...
How much is GoboLinux really making things simpler? /Mount instead of /mnt? What does that solve? Now I need a capital letter and almost twice the typing for something dead simple already. /Users instead of /home, seriously? Everything is just renamed and longer with capitals, where is the benefit?
The existing system is terse, clear, well known and standard. Where is the benefit to longer names and mixed cases with basically the same delineation?
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@scottalanmiller Not knowing what the acronyms mean for any new user (or the file structure) as a whole would be confusing to new users.
I agree that capital letters really don't help any, but I do see where have things defined as /Users would be comparable C:\Users
So there is very much a similarity that the devs are going for there. (benefit or not to you)
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller Not knowing what the acronyms mean for any new user (or the file structure) as a whole would be confusing to new users.
I agree that capital letters really don't help any, but I do see where have things defined as /Users would be comparable C:\Users
So there is very much a similarity that the devs are going for there. (benefit or not to you)
Not enough similarity to be useful, though.
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@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller Not knowing what the acronyms mean for any new user (or the file structure) as a whole would be confusing to new users.
I agree that capital letters really don't help any, but I do see where have things defined as /Users would be comparable C:\Users
So there is very much a similarity that the devs are going for there. (benefit or not to you)
Not enough similarity to be useful, though.
Ok.
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller Not knowing what the acronyms mean for any new user (or the file structure) as a whole would be confusing to new users.
I agree that capital letters really don't help any, but I do see where have things defined as /Users would be comparable C:\Users
So there is very much a similarity that the devs are going for there. (benefit or not to you)
Not enough similarity to be useful, though.
Ok.
I mean seriously, it still requires totally learning the new system, and requires doing so while ignoring all traditional UNIX knowledge. It doesn't make a transition transparent from Windows (even Windows to Windows doesn't do that) and once you have to learn it, it's all the same. Anyone struggling with abbreviations like /mnt can't program.
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@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller Not knowing what the acronyms mean for any new user (or the file structure) as a whole would be confusing to new users.
I agree that capital letters really don't help any, but I do see where have things defined as /Users would be comparable C:\Users
So there is very much a similarity that the devs are going for there. (benefit or not to you)
Not enough similarity to be useful, though.
Ok.
I mean seriously, it still requires totally learning the new system, and requires doing so while ignoring all traditional UNIX knowledge. It doesn't make a transition transparent from Windows (even Windows to Windows doesn't do that) and once you have to learn it, it's all the same. Anyone struggling with abbreviations like /mnt can't program.
I don't know what the devs have for goals, but it doesn't sound as though the goal is to develop a ISO for programming.
Even the website is non-descriptive for what the goal is. The site mentioned side by side virtualization platform (for different software versions running within the same environment).
But nothing else besides that. The OS could have been designed for people who are afraid of linux, and know windows, but need virtualization and are afraid of every other option that exist as a hypervisor.
There is no defined goal for this project that I can see, besides maybe the side by side virtualization capabilities.
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And just because UNIX was there first, doesn't mean everyone wants to fall back to the heyday of Unix.
I use linux OS's regularly and I barely know the file structure. Probably a fault of mine, but I've never used Unix (directly) as you may have.
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I use linux OS's regularly and I barely know the file structure. Probably a fault of mine, but I've never used Unix (directly) as you may have.
Most people use Windows every day and don't know its either, though.
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I use linux OS's regularly and I barely know the file structure. Probably a fault of mine, but I've never used Unix (directly) as you may have.
Linux is UNIX.
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@DustinB3403 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
But nothing else besides that. The OS could have been designed for people who are afraid of linux, and know windows, but need virtualization and are afraid of every other option that exist as a hypervisor.
THen making the file structure capital dependent would really undermine that. Making WIndows people memorize capitalization beyond "keep it lower case" is a mess.
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@mlnews said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
https://fosspost.org/2017/01/22/gobolinux-a-linux-distribution-with-new-filesystem-hierarchy/
There are many different Linux distributions out there. Thousands of them are designed to meet different purposes (no matter how small the difference from each one). Today, we would like to introduce GoboLinux for you.
GoboLinux is a special Linux distribution which is built from scratch. It offers an alternative filesystem hierarchy. To clarify this, we all know that the common Unix hierarchy includes directories like /usr, /bin, /etc.. But that’s not the case in GoboLinux. For example the filesystem directories here are:
- /System: The system files, binaries and kernel and placed here.
- /Programs: All programs are inserted in this directory. Each program has its own folder which contains its own settings, files and data. Multiple versions of the same program can be installed easily, because each version contains its own files sepearted from the other version.
- /Users: The home folders for the system users (root and all others) are listed here. It’s like /home in Unix hierarchy.
- /Data: The data folder contains information about packages and recipes needed by the system. It also includes the “Variable” folder. Which is actually /var.
- /Mount: Mounting directory if needed. Just like normal /mnt.
From the developers point of view1), this new hierarchy is a much better design for a filesystem. It keeps everything “categorized” which allows files to be preserved in these categories easily. To maintain the backwards compatibility with Unix hierarchy, a lot of symlinks are used to point to the directories on GoboLinux. For example if you run cd /etc it will take you to /System/Settings. Thus, there’s no need to modify the applications to work on the new way of categorizing these files......
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case sensitive".
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@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
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@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
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@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
Well yeah, OSX is just ridiculous.
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@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
Well yeah, OSX is just ridiculous.
I came very close to getting a job at ABC but they wanted Mac experience (Guru was the word they used). The guy who got the job lied through his teeth (my friends works there and explained it to me). Being an honest person is hard sometimes.
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@wirestyle22 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
Well yeah, OSX is just ridiculous.
Being an honest person is hard sometimes.
Not really, no... Dealing with the consequences of being an honest person is hard sometimes.
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@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@wirestyle22 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
Well yeah, OSX is just ridiculous.
Being an honest person is hard sometimes.
Not really, no... Dealing with the consequences of being an honest person is hard sometimes.
Yeah that's what I mean
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@wirestyle22 said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@dafyre said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@scottalanmiller said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
@Francesco-Provino said in GoboLinux: Experimenting with a New Filesystem Hierarchy:
I found traditional Unix hierarchy more confortable for interactive shell use, Mac os X is a pain with all that capital letters. Seems like a tribute to the "case seinsitive".
Yeah, this is unnecessarily complicated.
To further muddy the waters, on a default install of OS X (10.11 in my case), things are not case sensitive. However, you can set that option if you partition the drives yourself.
Well yeah, OSX is just ridiculous.
I came very close to getting a job at ABC but they wanted Mac experience (Guru was the word they used). The guy who got the job lied through his teeth (my friends works there and explained it to me). Being an honest person is hard sometimes.
Who was dishonest? The guy or the company that happily hired someone without experience?
