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Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

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gerdesj·

"Like many Unix users, I long ago created a ~/bin/ directory in my home directory"

No, this is my laptop - /usr/bin is the place for that. No, this is a simple server - /usr/bin is the place for that.

Perhaps I'm missing something after 23 odd years of using Unix systems including this Arch laptop.

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/usr/bin is under the control of your package manager _ unless you're building and installing packages for all your adhoc scripts, aren't you worried about name collisions?

I know Arch's package manager, at least, will refuse to install a package if it would overwrite an existing file.

I keep ~/bin for easy version control/backups of my own scripts. I don't want to make a directory/repo for each script, and for getting them on PATH I can either add ~/bin to PATH or remember to run ln -s ~/bin/* /usr/bin/ after adding a script. Adding to PATH has saved me a few seconds of minor frustration at no cost.

Stuff in /usr/(bin|share|...) might get overwritten by system update or reinstall. A better choice is /usr/local/

I can't write to /usr without root, and I can write to home. I also personally like a clear delineation between things that are managed by the package manager and by myself.

/usr/local/bin?

Usr stands for universal system resource, look up the file hierarchy standard.

No, it's short for ‘user’.

More precisely 'users'. Every user can access it.

It started out as a separate drive for home directories and files that didn't fit on the first drive. cf. /usr/dmr (Dennis Ritchie), and /usr/ken (Ken Thompson).

https://blog.w1r3.net/2018/01/06/rob-landley-about-usr-split...

‘Users’ because that's where users' home directories were, like /home in Linux FHS or /Users in Mac OS. Then acquired overflow versions of bin et al. when the root disk filled up.

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