Debian Sticking With Merged /usr Plan

For years Debian developers have been planning for a merged /usr concept where the /{bin,sbin,lib}/ directories becoming symbolic links to /usr/{bin,sbin,lib}/. With the upcoming Debian 10 Buster is the initial step of their plan after it was postponed from Debian Stretch.

Debian Buster almost lost out on /usr merged as the Debian Technical Committee was asked to evaluate the situation and revert the existing work due to binary packages built on a merged-usr system are not installable on a non-merged-usr system. But the committee has now announced their decision and they have decided not to override the work.

If you are not familiar with the merged /usr effort, it's not limited to Debian and the original proposal is explained well over on FreeDesktop.org.

The technical committee's response to evaluating merged /usr as well as the beefing up of the plan for Debian 11 "Bullseye" is outlined in this mailing list post.