[bbanyc]

Nitpicking:

If you look at the very early versions of the Unix manuals, before even /lib was invented, there was a notion that /bin was the "system" (section 1) and /usr/bin was "user software" (section 6). This fell by the wayside when they ran out of disk space on / and started putting section 1 commands in /usr/bin. At some point the system/user distinction was abandoned and everything but the games got moved to section 1 of the manual.

(Back in those early days /lib files used to be in /etc. So did /sbin. There's still a meaningful semantic difference between programs any user could run vs programs only useful to root.)

On *BSD there is no initramfs equivalent and the / partition still serves its traditional role of the minimal startup environment. And /home never existed before Linux - it was always something like /usr/home as far as I can tell.

[kps]

  > And /home never existed before Linux

SunOS used /home before Linux existed.

[digi_owl]

I can't help think that initramfs is a pox on Linux. It seems to lead to all kinds of "solutions" that are bothersome at best to maintain unless you have big dollars at your back.

[kakwa_]

I've never quite understood it myself.

It's far from mandatory (I've run Gentoo for years without it) and when you have to fix stuff in the mkinitrd script, you just cry...