Are there any things in Linux that need to be started over from scratch?
I'm curious how software can be created and evolve over time. I'm afraid that at some point, we'll realize there are issues with the software we're using that can only be remedied by massive changes or a complete rewrite.
Are there any instances of this happening? Where something is designed with a flaw that doesn't get realized until much later, necessitating scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch?
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Not really software but, personally I think the FHS could do with replacing. It feels like its got a lot of historical baggage tacked on that it could really do with shedding.
Fault handling system?
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
/bin,/dev,/homeand all that stuffWould be a crazy expensive migration though
Definitely. As nice as it would be, I don't think it will significantly change any time soon, for several reasons. Not least of which is because several programs would likely just flatly refuse to implement such a change, judging by some of them refusing to even consider patches to implement the XDG Base Directory Specification.
So much of that is PDP-11 baggage or derived from it.
Or more generally Very Small Disk baggage.
What's wrong with it?
$PATHshouldn't even be a thing, as today disk space is cheap so there is no need to scatter binaries all over the place.Historically,
/usrwas created so that you could mount a new disk here and have more binaries installed on your system when the disk with/binwas full.And there are just so many other stuff like that which doesn't make sense anymore (
/var/tmpcomes to mind,/opt,/homewhich was supposed to be/usrbut name was already taken, etc ...).How would virtual environment software, like conda, work without $PATH?
Today's software would probably break, but my point is that
$PATHis a relic from ancient times that solved a problem we don't have anymore.