Linda Walsh said the following on 02/06/2013 04:30 PM:
In this case, since the root of this idea stems from the much reviled Microsoft (the designer admits to the the config files being almost an exact carry over from the many ".ini" files of Win98/XP (Win7 is more XML based or other higher-level language based -- not to mention registry).
Case in point -- has been the move away from a central local for config files in /etc/sysconfig, and a proliferation of config files spread out in per-package locations. This was already shown to be a bad idea by MS for system management -- but it is a phase they went through 10 years ago. Seems like we are getting their 10-20 year old ideas...
You're showing you're ignorance of history here. What you are terming Microsoft's .ini files pre-dated Microsoft. That format of config file was used long before in UNIX. But the old UNIX-era didn't have a special name for that format. Sometimes they were "rc" (maybe a dot, maybe not) files. sometimes ".conf", sometime ".cfg", sometimes ".config". Yes you can complain about the inconsistency, but it never seemed to present any problems to the people using them. I am upset that you seem to think that just because an idea comes out of Microsoft or that Microsoft employees published something that is to be reviled. There are many fine minds who have and are working at Microsoft. Not everyone there is like Ballmer! I remember seeing this kind of prejudicial view of IBM in the last century by people who worked with UNIX and VMS, and who failed to realise that IBM was one of the leading drivers of IT research, though they made little use of the genius they funded. Microsoft has followed in these footsteps. I'd also point out that people from Microsoft are major contributors to Linux. I'm sure if I go though my storage I can find the old V7 and BSD source tapes from long ago, though I have nothing to read them on, but surely they are on-line somewhere. You might try looking up the old B-News of 1980 vintage or something of that ilk. As to the per-package location issue, no that's nothing to do with systemd. Many developers have fallen into that. I'd bring to your attention KDM, whose config file lives in /usr/share/. If anything the systemd approach has enforced a migration to have more under /etc/. Try running rpm -q -l $(rpm -q -a | grep kdm) on a system that uses KDM as the login manager. You'll see that various config files live under /usr share. Oh, and then there's the build system! The config files for each package live with the package not with /etc. It would be awkward to have it otherwise! If you're complaining that config files for systemd live in /lib/systemd, then I'm sorry, I'm not buying that. That's where the library lives. Its like the library of PAM files lives in /lib/security. That you have a library of something doesn't mean all the items in the library are active. What is active is under /etc/systemd. Linking is easier than copying. All in all while I support having config under /etc I'm not in favour of obsessive regimentation. Nor anarchy. But the UNIX/Linux culture is not one of obsessive regimentation. Nor would it be possible under anarchy. But so much of FOSS has grow up around convention and a few simple ideas. One I saw on the frontispiece of one of my engineering textbooks. It was a quotation, freely translated, from the Roman poet Horace and I think it sums up FOSS and Linux very well: If you have a better idea, Brother, Propose it Freely. Otherwise make use of mine. Some of us are old enough to remember when many of the things you are advocating, Linda, weren't around. Some of us remember the resistance to the sysv-init approach which in its time was just as radical a 'rationalization' of the previous ad-hoc collection of scripts. -- "Democracy" is a system that allows those who are directly affected by decisions to exert some influence on the decision makers, -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org