Hi Mats,

Mats Wichmann wrote on Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 08:17:23AM -0600:

> Note:  the current FHS has carried forward the idea of being
> relatively OS-agnostic.

In my book, that is the only benefit it provides.
A non-portable standard would be a contradiction in itself.

> There are historical artifacts based on UNIX and *BSD systems.

Right, the FHS is supposed to be a standard for UNIX (with the
various Linux distributions being examples of UNIX, even if not in
the trademark sense).  In that sense, it is a companion to POSIX:
free UNIX implementations (like the various BSDs, illumos, and
Linux) strive to closely match POSIX, even though almost nobody
assigns any relevance to certification or similar formalistic
overhead.

> One thing that's been discussed more than once over the years
> is whether there's value to a more current-Linux-centric version,

I think that would be the last nail in the coffin.

> where maybe some of the historical constraints don't need to be
> retained?

If a constraint is purely historical, it may be worth dispensing
with; yet before doing so, it needs to be checked whether it is
still relevant for modern UNIX systems (as opposed to merely for
Linux alone).

I think part of the reason for the waning interest in the LHS is
that many already consider it excessively biased towards Linux and
consider many discussions about it too Linux-centric instead of
promoting interoperability.

The task is still relevant though, no doubt.  For example, in a
network i'm co-administering, we have both Linux and BSD client
computers, both mounting NFS partitions from the same file server.
Users may alternate between both operating systems, having the same
home directory on both, running the same client software (of course
compiled differently for the different systems), often enough
operating on the same user data from both platforms - using both
private user data and shared user data that is writeable by various
UNIX groups.

Yours,
  Ingo

-- 
Ingo Schwarze <[email protected]>
http://www.openbsd.org/   <[email protected]>
http://mdocml.bsd.lv/     <[email protected]>
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