Technological advantages over Linux

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 08:38:48 +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 13:49:11 +0700 Victor Sudakov wrote:
>> Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions wrote:  
>> > 
>> > An update never ever would replace /etc/foo.conf . On Arch Linux it
>> > would be stored as /etc/foo.conf.pacnew , almost all Linux distros
>> > provide such a solution, but the admin is screwed, if an update
>> > does add a file to /etc/foo.d/ .  
>> 
>> FreeBSD has taken this path too (looking at /etc/rc.conf.d/,
>> /etc/cron.d and numerous others).  
>
>FreeBSD has used this approach to carefully separate default
>configuration from user provided configuration - the directories are
>generally for sysadmins the files for the distribution.

For Linux it should be like this, too, but actually it isn't.
To be fair, not all Linux packagers using drop-in dirs are berserkers.
A "base" package might contain a rough default configuration. For using
software of a "highly specialised" package one setting of a rough
default configuration _must_ be changed. With good faith the packager
overrides this value by a drop-in file, since using this package's
software anyway requires this special value. _But_ maybe the package
wasn't installed to use the software, but just to get the documentation
and the user isn't aware that a value was changed in a way, that breaks
the working install. However, some packagers are berserkers, completely
misusing drop-in dirs.