Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

| http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html

At one point, /bin stuff was statically linked but /usr/bin was not.
When your system (UNIX) was sick and came up in single user mode, only
/ was mounted and only stuff in /bin was supposed to work.

The /bin /sbin distinction is useful, I think.  But maybe no longer, given
that we're moving towards finer priviledge distinctions than the root
/ non-root of the good old days.

I never did get /local vs /usr/local.  /opt was a Sun invention, I
think.

If distinctions are not going to be clearly and simply made, then
perhaps it is time to get rid of them.

In the good old days, searching for binaries in too many directories
(i.e. a long list in $PATH) caused real slowdown.  I think that it
still costs more than is recognized.  There are way too many entries
in these directories.  In general, BASH startup is quite expensive.
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