In Fedora 40, it is proposed to combine the contents of the directories /usr/bin and /usr/sbin by replacing the /usr/sbin directory with a symbolic link pointing to /usr/bin. The conversion of /bin and /sbin into symbolic links for /usr/bin and /usr/sbin was completed in 2012 with Fedora 17. After consolidating all executable files in one place, the mention of the /usr/sbin directory will be removed from the PATH environment variable. This proposal is still under discussion and has not yet been considered by the FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), which is responsible for the technical aspects of the Fedora distribution's development.
It is noted that the division of executable files into the bin and sbin directories is an outdated practice that has lost its meaning in modern distributions. Initially, it was meant for the most important executable files to be placed in sbin, compiled statically and suitable for recovery mode, for example, in case of filesystem corruption or inaccessibility of the /usr partition. In Fedora, for a long time now, the contents of sbin are not compiled statically, and the content is actually placed in the /usr partition, not in the root partition.
The separation into sbin and bin was also used to distinguish programs for the administrator from those for regular users, but the criteria for placing programs in sbin or bin are quite vague, and for many years, the PATH environment variable for all users in most distributions includes both /usr/bin and /usr/sbin (systemd by default adds both directories to the PATH for all users and services). Thus, in practice, the separation of bin and sbin has long been irrelevant and only complicates things when an absolute path to an executable file is needed, especially considering that different distributions allocate executable files to the bin and sbin directories differently.
De unificatie van bin en sbin zal het voor de beheerders van pakketten gemakkelijker maken om te bepalen in welke map ze de uitvoerbare bestanden moeten plaatsen; het zal het systeem voorspelbaarder en begrijpelijker maken voor gebruikers; de compatibiliteit met andere distributies zal worden vergroot (bijvoorbeeld, in Fedora zat het hulpprogramma ip in sbin, terwijl het in Debian in bin zat; na de unificatie zal het pad dat typisch is voor Debian ook in Fedora werken); het zal de distributie meer compatibel maken met Arch Linux, die in 2013 de sbin en bin heeft samengevoegd; het zal het aantal mapcontroles bij het uitvoeren van execvp() en soortgelijke oproepen verminderen (er hoeft maar één map te worden doorlopen in plaats van twee); het zal het zoeken in logs en de analyse van uitvoer van hulpprogramma's, zoals strace, vereenvoudigen.
Bron: opennet.ru
