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It really is. I'm not talking about app binaries only. But about all files that app creates after install. Most of the reside in home dir, but stays there forev

It really is. I'm not talking about app binaries only. But about all files that app creates after install. Most of the reside in home dir, but stays there forever. Like various cache files, settings, ... And most of the time they are not confined to single dir.

laumars 8y ago
That has always been the case though. For as long as I've use Linux as a desktop my $HOME directory has been littered with dot-files and folders. And as for Windows, things used to be so much worse. Since the UAC, Windows applications have been limited in where they can write to lest they annoy their users with frequent escalation prompts. Before the UAC developers often used to write files all over the place - it was a complete nightmare! In fact one of the primary purposes of the UAC - as I recall - was to reign developers in. Even the UAC aside, on Windows you now have the application data directory and permissions on the registry which both take some reliance off random files dumped anywhere. Before then Windows was like the wild west. And we're not talking that long ago in terms of the history of Windows - Vista was released 11 years ago and it took a few years after that for developers to catch up. Plus with the trend of moving everything to the web, you're getting fewer native applications which can write those random files in seemingly random locations (that's one of the few good things about the move to web applications in my personal opinion). You'll always have problems with developers having their own opinions - that's inescapable. But things used to be so much worse.
kbenson 8y ago
> Most of the reside in home dir, but stays there forever. Like various cache files, settings, ... And most of the time they are not confined to single dir. I think you need to support that statement. I believe the vast majority of software on common Unix distros creates no files in $HOME[1], and of those that do the majority use one folder in home[2], which *should+ be used for configuration, and often you don't want it automatically uninstalled on software removal. The few I can think of that quote to multiple locations do so because the extra locations are shared folders. For example, I would not want my downloads directory removed on uninstallation of Firefox. 1: E.g. Most things in /bin, and /usr/bin. 2: other than what I outlined above, I can't think of any that use multiple directories. If it's truly a common as you say, you should be able to provide some examples.
- tremon 8y ago
  He's referring to the XDG standard [0], I think. It used to be that all persistent user-configuration resided in ~/.${appname}, but some people were unhappy with that so they recreated the etc|var|lib|tmp filesystem usage distinction inside users' home directories. This means that an application's user files are now spread across $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_CACHE_HOME and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. [0] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-...

laumars 8y ago

That has always been the case though. For as long as I've use Linux as a desktop my $HOME directory has been littered with dot-files and folders. And as for Windows, things used to be so much worse. Since the UAC, Windows applications have been limited in where they can write to lest they annoy their users with frequent escalation prompts. Before the UAC developers often used to write files all over the place - it was a complete nightmare! In fact one of the primary purposes of the UAC - as I recall - was to reign developers in. Even the UAC aside, on Windows you now have the application data directory and permissions on the registry which both take some reliance off random files dumped anywhere. Before then Windows was like the wild west. And we're not talking that long ago in terms of the history of Windows - Vista was released 11 years ago and it took a few years after that for developers to catch up. Plus with the trend of moving everything to the web, you're getting fewer native applications which can write those random files in seemingly random locations (that's one of the few good things about the move to web applications in my personal opinion). You'll always have problems with developers having their own opinions - that's inescapable. But things used to be so much worse.

kbenson 8y ago

> Most of the reside in home dir, but stays there forever. Like various cache files, settings, ... And most of the time they are not confined to single dir. I think you need to support that statement. I believe the vast majority of software on common Unix distros creates no files in $HOME[1], and of those that do the majority use one folder in home[2], which *should+ be used for configuration, and often you don't want it automatically uninstalled on software removal. The few I can think of that quote to multiple locations do so because the extra locations are shared folders. For example, I would not want my downloads directory removed on uninstallation of Firefox. 1: E.g. Most things in /bin, and /usr/bin. 2: other than what I outlined above, I can't think of any that use multiple directories. If it's truly a common as you say, you should be able to provide some examples.

tremon 8y ago
He's referring to the XDG standard [0], I think. It used to be that all persistent user-configuration resided in ~/.${appname}, but some people were unhappy with that so they recreated the etc|var|lib|tmp filesystem usage distinction inside users' home directories. This means that an application's user files are now spread across $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_CACHE_HOME and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. [0] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-...