The developers of Fedora have the first version of version 17 released, where a large part of the systeemdirectories and the underlying files are moved from the rootfolder to the /usrdirectory.
In Fedora 17 are in the Rawhide-test versions of the folders /bin, /sbin, /lib and /lib64 and the underlying files are moved from the root directory to the /usr-folder. The developers speak with the recast on a unified filesystem. To problems with ‘old’ Linux software and scripts to prevent, Fedora 17 use of referring symbolic links in the root-directory.
With the surgery, where within the Fedora community for a long time about, to explore, the developers of the compatibility with open source GNU software and various Unix variants to improve. So, has the commercial Unix operating system Oracle Solaris a large portion of his files already to be found in the usr folder.
With the new format, would it be possible to only a small number of system files in a root partition, then the operating system of the other files on a separate mountpoint from a usr partition can be read. Especially for virtualization, and cloud computing would be the simplified directory structure can offer advantages.
Despite the changes that the Fedora team wants to implement in the directory structure of Fedora 17, the other ‘big’ distros, as yet, no concrete plans for the example to follow. Fedora 17 is expected in may will be released.