On 6/19/2011 11:54 PM, Julian Leviston wrote:
On 20/06/2011, at 4:33 PM, BGB wrote:
interestingly, I don't believe in getting rid of the file-system, per-se, as
technically it works fairly well and is a proven piece of technology.
Interestingly, I disagree entirely. Finding things is a pain for most people
(including myself).
a relevant distinction can be made though:
for the user;
or, for programs...
it is like, for programs, systems with a structure similar to the
"Windows System Registry" are very useful, but for users, they can
become hopelessly confused, and naive changes risk irreparably breaking
the OS...
(one of my first personal major encounters with the System Registry had,
at the time, rendered the computer unable to boot...).
Unix-style single-root-mount systems are IMO most convenient from a
software-development perspective, albeit they have a few present severe
limitations (mostly that it is nearly impossible to keep "applications"
and "the OS" separate), as apparently Unix and Linux were designed with
it in mind that apparently "of course, user applications and data will
go in /usr/bin and /usr/var and similar, and system applications and
data in /bin and /var...".
a few features I sort of wish Linux had:
~/bin, ~/var, ~/etc, ... (or: ~/.usr/bin, ~/.usr/var, ~/.usr/etc, ...),
which would be used for per-user programs and settings (vs the current
mess that ~ tends to become);
a shared-object system which looked up SO's more like Windows does DLLs
(largely eliminating the need for "rpath" and similar);
...
a Unix-style organization for a VFS is fairly helpful though.
for users, it is different:
MS partly does the whole "My Documents" thing, I guess as an effort to
simplify things for newbies (albeit, IMO, they did it poorly).
one possibility would be organizing the filesystem differently for the
user and for the OS.
...
in my case, I have a personal file-management system which mostly
prevents me losing stuff, but is technically a fairly
complex/bureaucratic process (would be difficult to really elaborate on).
OTOH, my dad just sort of naively organizes things in a deep hierarchy
based on associations, and so tends to loose stuff fairly often.
or such...
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