[geocar]

/usr is absolutely where user data was. That's what it stands for "users".

First when / ran out of space, new programs were put on the other disk /usr in /usr/bin so everyone could assume programs were in /bin except ones that were newly installed so they would be in /usr/bin

When /usr ran out of space, a new disk was added as /home and things that were easier to move (user directories) were moved first leaving things that everyone's script was depending on (#!/usr/bin...) where they were.

This was done out of necessity, not out of good taste.

[elros]

/usr stands for Unix System Resources

[geocar]

More marketing I'm afraid. See:

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/notes.html

See also, from:

https://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/usr...

In the original Unix implementations, /usr was where the home directories of the users were placed (that is to say, /usr/someone was then the directory now known as /home/someone).

[mysterydip]

Why didn't it go away once /home became common?

[gerdesj]

It still had /usr/bin and /usr/sbin in it and scripts, muscle memory and general inertia to contend with. Yes of course it should have gone away, perl should have been at v6 and python at v3 years ago.

I'm off to saddle up my piggie squadron for a flypast.