[LBo] Fwd: Re: Anyone know anything about the etymology of /usr, /etc

[Randy Kramer]

On Thursday 08 June 2006 12:25 pm, Howard Rosen wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 18:01 +0200, Stefan Waidele jun. wrote:
> > Randy Kramer wrote:
> > > Just came across this, which is a recent post in the thread that
> > > indicates that user directories were, at one time, in /usr.
>
> According to my UNIX book - The Waite Group's UNIX Primer Plus Second
> Edition 1990 - on pages 72 & 73 in Chapter 4, it reads:
>
> "Of course, every other user has a home directory, too.  Thus UNIX needs
> a way to tell home directories apart.  UNIX accomplishes this by giving
> your home directory a name, usually your login name.  Next, UNIX needs a
> way of keeping track of all these home directories.  It does this with a
> new directory -- a directory of directories.  Typically, this directory
> is called usr, and the home directories are termed subdirectories of
> usr."
>
> Looks like things have changed from UNIX to Linux.  I don't know if the
> above is still true in UNIX, though.

I hadn't really thought about when the change occurred (or that it might have 
occurred in the transition from Unix to Linux).  (Without much Unix 
experience, I tend to lump Unix and Linux together in my thinking.)

Still, my point in bringing this up was that changes do occur.

Randy Kramer