Improving the reliability of file system monitoring tools (Collabora blog)

> Well, I suspect the correct answer to that is that root is meant to be read-only under normal circumstances, and /var should be another volume.
> But then, if you're a desktop user, that's sysadmin details you don't want to worry about ...

In many scenarios, the user and the sysadmin are the same person, and installing new software is considered "normal circumstances".