I'm not 100% sure about the reasoning for the original split, but wasn't it something like: /bin, /lib and others provide enough functionality to do some more interesting startup actions that can mount /usr from other storage? [edit: just found in the proposal that it was indeed the idea]<p>Was there some other big reason? If this is the one, it doesn't seem as relevant today as it would be a couple of years ago, so maybe that change is good...
> Then there's the convention used to override shell built-ins by calling the full path to the non-built-in version. If the full path is used and the built-in has been relocated, that's going to break, too.<p>I don't understand this part. If you specify <i>any</i> path then you will not be running a shell built-in. Relocating a built-in makes absolutely no sense since built-ins have no path. That's what makes them built-in.
This is not definitely going to happen. In fact it's the subject of lengthy and colourful arguments on Fedora-devel list[0].<p>Personally I think it's a good idea, but I'd like to see agreement across the major distros first.<p>[0] <a href="https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-October/thread.html#158599" rel="nofollow">https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-October...</a>
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why they want to bring everything into /usr/ instead of bring everything in /usr/ out? While we're simplifying, it seems counterintuitive to put everything deeper in the filesystem. Why not move /usr/bin into /bin, /usr/lib into /lib, etc?