[ale] Linux Distributions

[marct at mindspring.com (Marc Torres)]

Michael H. Warfield wrote: 
>         This is actually kind of humorous because "/sbin" is a
> relative newcomer on the block.  The use of /etc for administrative 
> utilities (and /stand for standalone utilities) dates way WAY back.
> They're just doing things the old "traditional" way.  Sun, I believe, 
> originated the convention of "/var" for system variable directories 
> so that / and /usr file systems could be mounted read-only.  I'm not 
> exactly sure where in the evolutionary line "/sbin" and "/usr/sbin" 
> appeared although I don't mourn the extinction of "/stand"...  :-)

	The point on Sun with /var is correct, it helped along
	greatly the ability to have diskless workstations reporting
	to a large NFS server.  You would normally find /tmp and 
	/usr/tmp symlinked to /var/tmp as well.

	/sbin and /usr/sbin came along with AT&T SVR4.  AT&T also 
	incorperated /var and some others (my memory is now getting
	fuzzy on the details :)

	Don't forget the addition of /share to store documentation 
	across systems.  I'm not sure who started that one tho.

> It would be entertaining to do an evolutionary tree of when
> certain conventions made there appearance and when certain others 
> became extinct (for all practical purposes).

	I have some older books around I could look thru.  We could
	come up with something interesting...  Might want to check 
	some of the unix faq archives as well for info.

	Marc Torres
	marct at mindspring.com