[oi-dev] Desktop Illumos Still Matters

[Joerg Schilling]

Andrew Gabriel <illumos at cucumber.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Nick Zivkovic wrote:
> > Agreed. Also, I see that /opt and /usr/$consolidation overlap in terms
> > of their purpose.
> >
> > For example we have /usr/X11. According to `man filesystem` /opt is
> > meant to hold add-on/third-party software.
> >   
>
> /opt was meant for unbundled software. Ideally, it should be empty 
> immediately following a full install of a distro, as everything is by 
> definition bundled. I don't think Solaris ever quite got that right, but 
> it was almost there. Everything you install after that (which isn't part 
> of the distro) should be in /opt (and /etc/opt and /var/opt), but a lot 
> of 3rd-party software developers got that wrong too.

There was a nice talk from Steve Bourne at the Sun User Group meeting in 
December 1990. He explained that first /usr/bin was hijacked by the system and 
people started with /usr/local. Then external sources hijacked /usr/local and 
as a result a FHS summit with most UNIX vendors decided to usr /opt.

We are now nearly 25 years after that /opt decision and still not everybody got 
it.

Jörg

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