[colug-432] Stoopid Question

[Jeff Frontz]

But what is "OS"?  Back in the day, the OS was the kernel.  It was all
in one file and lived in root.  Then fancy-pants after-market things
came along-- windowing terminals, shared libraries, shared memory,
windowing systems-that-are-OSs-in-their-own-right, streams, loadable
modules, etc.  Are these part of the "OS" or are they extra cruft that
just weight it down?  And all those "programs"-- there are the ones
that originally came out of New Jersey, the ones that came out of
Bezerkely, the ones that came out of euro-grad-student dorm rooms, the
editors-that-are-really-shells-if-not-OSs-in-their-own-right, the
nifty text-based-but-graphical adventure game you downloaded from
netnews that your entire group wants to play [anybody remember
"larn"?]... you don't want to mingle them with the [what was] the
stock stuff, lest the heretics and infidels get confused.  And when
you have something really nifty that you wrote and want to share with
others on the machine -- but you don't want to confuse other software
-- where do you put those?  And when several programs share their
"files", where do those go?


As others have suggested, there is a method to the madness, but it's
obvious that the madness has been an evolutionary process.


Jeff



On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Steve VanSlyck <s.vanslyck at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Richard you are giving me way too much credit. I'm not a +ux user, just a wannabe and lurker trying to learn. Ideally I would just want three directors at root: OS, Programs, Everything-Else, and each program to have all of its files, except possible data, in its own subdirectory.
>