On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 16:03, Charles H. Sauer <sauer@technologists.com> wrote:
To add to the inventory below:
Dell SVR4 /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin
NEXTSTEP/486 3.3 /bin and /usr/bin are separate

On 2/23/2021 1:37 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> The recent discussions on the TUHS list of whether /bin and /usr/bin
> are different, or symlinked, brought to mind the limited disk and tape
> sizes of the 1970s and 1980s.  Especially the lower-cost tape
> technologies had issues with correct recognition of an end-of-tape
> condition, making it hard to span a dump across tape volumes, and
> strongly suggesting that directory tree sizes be limited to what could
> fit on a single tape.
>
> I made an experiment today across a broad range of operating systems
> (many with multiple versions in our test farm), and produced these two
> tables, where version numbers are included only if the O/S changed
> practices:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Systems with /bin a symlink to /usr/bin (or both to yet another common
> directory) [42 major variants]:
>
>       ArchLinux               Kali                    RedHat 8
>       Arco                    Kubuntu 19, 20          Q4OS
>       Bitrig                  Lite                    ScientificLinux 7
>       CentOS 7, 8             Lubuntu 19              Septor
>       ClearLinux              Mabox                   Solaris 10, 11
>       Debian 10, 11           Magiea                  Solydk
>       Deepin                  Manjaro                 Sparky
>       DilOS                   Mint 20                 Springdale
>       Dyson                   MXLinux 19              Ubuntu 19, 20, 21
>       Fedora                  Neptune                 UCS
>       Gnuinos                 Netrunner               Ultimate
>       Gobolinux               Oracle Linux            Unleashed
>       Hefftor                 Parrot 4.7              Void
>       IRIX                    PureOS                  Xubuntu 19, 20
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Systems with separate /bin and /usr/bin [60 major variants]:
>
>       Alpine                  Hipster                 OS108
>       AltLinux                KaOS                    Ovios
>       Antix                   KFreeBSD                PacBSD
>       Bitrig                  Kubuntu 18              Parrot 4.5
>       Bodhi                   LibertyBSD              PCBSD
>       CentOS 5, 6             LMDE                    PCLinuxOS
>       ClonOS                  Lubuntu 17              Peppermint
>       Debian 7--10            LXLE                    Salix
>       DesktopBSD              macOS                   ScientificLinux 6
>       Devuan                  MidnightBSD             SlackEX
>       DragonFlyBSD            Mint 18--20             Slackware
>       ElementaryOS            MirBSD                  Solus
>       FreeBSD 9--13           MXLinux 17, 18          T2
>       FuryBSD                 NetBSD 6-1010           Trident
>       Gecko                   NomadBSD                Trisquel
>       Gentoo                  OmniOS                  TrueOS
>       GhostBSD                OmniTribblix            Ubuntu 14--18
>       GNU/Hurd                OpenBSD                 Xubuntu 18
>       HardenedBSD             OpenMandriva            Zenwalk
>       Helium                  openSUSE                Zorinos
>       
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some names appear in both tables, indicating a transition from
> separate directories to symlinked directories in more recent O/S
> releases.
>
> Many of these system names are spelled in mixed lettercase, and if
> I've botched some of them, I extend my apologies to their authors.
>
> Some of those systems run on multiple CPU architectures, and our test
> farm exploits that; however, I found no instance of the CPU type
> changing the separation or symbolic linking of /bin and /usr/bin.
>


Solaris /bin was a symlink to /usr/bin as early as 2.5.1.  It's also worth pointing out that NetBSD, in addition to having a separate /bin and /usr/bin, has /rescue which has a large selection of statically linked binaries.

-Henry