Hypothetically speaking, would forking FreeBSD or a *nix to use a simpler folder structure be feasible? I can imagine a lot of package managers and applications make assumptions about the folder structure though, so there would have to be a lot of changes made to make everything work.
I was thinking "just symlink /sbin with /bin", but there would probably be conflicts.
> I was thinking "just symlink /sbin with /bin", but there would probably be conflicts
Given how long /sbin et al have been around, there would always be some edge cases. However it is still possible to do. GoboLinux uses symlinks to achieve LFH[3] compatibility while still having friendly directory names. ArchLinux also just has one bin directory and uses symlinks for compatibility:
» ls -l / | grep bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2021-12-07 02:41 bin -> usr/bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2021-12-07 02:41 sbin -> usr/bin
» ls -l /usr | grep bin
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 110,592 2022-05-06 09:23 bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2021-12-07 02:41 sbin -> bin
I'm actually a bit surprised about `/bin` there. Maybe it's archaic but I've always considered the point of `/bin` to be a minimal set of tools that could allow an otherwise-hosed system to be booted/debugged. So it (and `/lib` and a few other directories) might be on a small, read-only partition while `/usr` and friends are on a much larger read-write partition.
Of course in the last twenty-five years I don't think I've ever really used a system set up like that. But it does seem nice to at least be able to do so.
IIRC, you are correct. And OpenBSD still sets up distinct partitions for `/bin` and `/lib` etc.
The first PC I built had 7 disk drives in a tower case, four distinct hard drives. Yes it was crazy. But the largest of these by far was 540 MB. It made sense to keep the boot stuff on its own hard drive.
Linux has `boot`, of course, but `boot` should never appear in $PATH. I think.
Why hypothetical, Gobo Linux[1] has already done it. Or if you want to just hide (rather than replace) the traditional Unix hierarchy from the user, you get macOS (inherited from NeXTSTEP).
The problem is that the actual benefits a pretty nebulous, so it's probably not worth the effort (and drawbacks of using different conventions than most others *nix users).
I'm pretty sure Gobo Linux functions partially like macOS does, hiding system directories, by removing them from readdir with a custom kernel module[0].
Also FreeBSD (and other BSDs) usually mount /usr on its own partition. I think that causes issues in Linux these days. So yes, merging in the BSDs may be a big change.
FWIW, Slackware keeps the separate, following the Linux Standard Base.
I was thinking "just symlink /sbin with /bin", but there would probably be conflicts.