9 ms·

Don't worry Rob. Freedesktop.org learned and spammed my home dir with Desktop/Document/Downloads/Music/etc/etc/etc...

by throw7 4y ago

kodah 4y ago
What Rob is griping about is more analogous to $HOME/.config now, or /var/run for non-user specific stuff.
- t-3 4y ago
  It's even worse with dotfiles nowadays than before. We have the cluttered "xdg" dotfile directories, and then a bunch of stuff makes random dotfiles/dotdirs in the home directory, and then .profiles/shellrcs/xinits that are basically required. Every single program seems to think you want a scrollback history, a configuration directory, or some random garbage to remind of you of that one time used it.
  - samatman 4y ago
    Complying with the XDG standard seems about as good as a stringly typed OS like Unix can get. Part of which is making sure that the defaults the program chooses may be overridden by consistent environment variables. Programs need some way to persist their own state and configuration, after all. The fact that XDG is more honored in the breach is tiresome, but this can at least be corrected, and it's well enough put together to be a steady-state approach to wrangling dotfiles.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nmz 4y ago
    Windows fixed this by just having %APPDATA%, and to me, its a great idea. No .config, no .local, no .share, no .randomfile, each installed program has its directory in hidden directory, and nobody has to know what each directory is for, and sure, this is what ~/.config is for some, but I also see there's some stuff in ~/.local/share and so on. To expand on this, when a program gets installed, it should write its binary location in a file, then if you ever erase it, a doesthisexistanymore $Config/dir/*/symlink | remove_entire_configuration_directory should be run via cron daily. No manual cleanup, ever.
    - kodah 4y ago
      Slight correction here, XDG keys are analogous to Windows standards: https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md
psanford 4y ago
That is annoying but easily fixed with xdg-user-dirs-update eg: xdg-user-dirs-update --set MUSIC ~/.xdg-user-dir/music
- jrockway 4y ago
  I had no idea. Excellent tip!
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  My annoyance is that they create any 'helpful' directories. It's just as bad on Windows. "Download", "Pictures", "3D crap", etc.... Nope, fuck that. This is my $home, I'll make it look how I want.
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    You may indeed prefer an empty canvas you have full control over. However, creating these folders by default is actually beneficial to most users. Most users (especially the vast majority that transitioned from Windows) expect these folders to exist. I believe the choice to not create these existed and still exists. Yet either all the distros that made that choice are history or they all made the opposite choice. I can say the same about other choices. I vastly prefer having a TRRS headphone jack and expandable storage on a phone. These do not appear to be priorities for most people.
    - adrusi 4y ago
      The choice not to create these directories basically doesn't exist, because all sorts of software will automatically create them if they don't exist, their creation isn't centrally orchestrated. A while back I was using a minimal i3-based desktop and when I launched transmission-gtk it thought I might want a "Downloads" folder, and would create it whenever it launched, even though it had been configures to download files elsewhere.
      - alexvoda 4y ago
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I've never seen anybody use these trashy preset directories as intended. Experienced users ignore them or delete them, using their own directory structure instead. Inexperienced users use one of them (usually Downloads or Desktop) while the others are treated as write-sometimes/read-never; e.g. sometimes they accidentally have files saved to those other directories which may as well be that file disappearing into the void never to be seen again. These presets only serve to confuse or at best annoy. These directories were well-intentioned originally but proved to be a huge mistake. They need to go away. (Edit: The above rant applies only to Downloads/Music/Video/etc. I think ~/.config and ~/.local are fine. I have no problem using those as intended, and I've seen plenty of other people using them too.)
- pdntspa 4y ago
  Windows users use them, Mac users use them, hell even on a fresh profile in Gnome I use them... It is a little weird to see htem on a server OS install though
  - rgovostes 4y ago
    They exist on macOS and Windows but I tend to agree that these directories are not particularly useful for users. Apple software tries to organize files but it's a disaster: iTunes used to download movies to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies, now TV.app downloads them to ~/Movies/TV/Media/Movies (!), and videos I shoot on my iPhone end up in ~/Pictures.
    - pdntspa 4y ago
      There has always been a tragedy of the commons with these folders, nobody can agree on where a lot of stuff goes. Should my game saves go in Documents? What about Documents/My Games/Publisher? What about %APPDATA%/Publisher? Hell there's even a few in ~/My Games. Every new game, figuring out where the save data went is an adventure and it's cluttered up every folder it touches. And now for whatever reason everyone is being pushed to put user data in %APPDATA%, which I don't consistently remember how to get to without that shortcut. So who knows! I just looked up the save data location for Subnautica and it is (I shit you not): %AppData%\..\LocalLow\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica\Subnautica\SavedGames
petepete 4y ago
I like to lowercase mine so bin and projects don't look weirdly out of place. Thankfully it's totally customisable. https://github.com/peteryates/dotfiles/blob/master/xdg/.config/user-dirs.dirs https://github.com/peteryates/dotfiles/blob/master/xdg/.conf...
jmclnx 4y ago
I agree, but the OpenBSD did some nice things in regards to ~/Downloads Using unveil() and pledge(), OpenBSD hides many $HOME and system directories from Firefox and chrome. Thus an errant javascript will only see things in ~/Downloads So one nice use for these.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Don't worry Rob. Freedesktop.org learned and spammed my home dir with Desktop/Document/Downloads/Music/etc/etc/etc...

by throw7 4y ago

Don't worry Rob. Freedesktop.org learned and spammed my home dir with Desktop/Document/Downloads/Music/etc/etc/etc...

kodah 4y ago

What Rob is griping about is more analogous to $HOME/.config now, or /var/run for non-user specific stuff.

t-3 4y ago
It's even worse with dotfiles nowadays than before. We have the cluttered "xdg" dotfile directories, and then a bunch of stuff makes random dotfiles/dotdirs in the home directory, and then .profiles/shellrcs/xinits that are basically required. Every single program seems to think you want a scrollback history, a configuration directory, or some random garbage to remind of you of that one time used it.
- samatman 4y ago
  Complying with the XDG standard seems about as good as a stringly typed OS like Unix can get. Part of which is making sure that the defaults the program chooses may be overridden by consistent environment variables. Programs need some way to persist their own state and configuration, after all. The fact that XDG is more honored in the breach is tiresome, but this can at least be corrected, and it's well enough put together to be a steady-state approach to wrangling dotfiles.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nmz 4y ago
  Windows fixed this by just having %APPDATA%, and to me, its a great idea. No .config, no .local, no .share, no .randomfile, each installed program has its directory in hidden directory, and nobody has to know what each directory is for, and sure, this is what ~/.config is for some, but I also see there's some stuff in ~/.local/share and so on. To expand on this, when a program gets installed, it should write its binary location in a file, then if you ever erase it, a doesthisexistanymore $Config/dir/*/symlink | remove_entire_configuration_directory should be run via cron daily. No manual cleanup, ever.
  - kodah 4y ago
    Slight correction here, XDG keys are analogous to Windows standards: https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md

psanford 4y ago

That is annoying but easily fixed with xdg-user-dirs-update eg: xdg-user-dirs-update --set MUSIC ~/.xdg-user-dir/music

jrockway 4y ago
I had no idea. Excellent tip!
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
My annoyance is that they create any 'helpful' directories. It's just as bad on Windows. "Download", "Pictures", "3D crap", etc.... Nope, fuck that. This is my $home, I'll make it look how I want.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  You may indeed prefer an empty canvas you have full control over. However, creating these folders by default is actually beneficial to most users. Most users (especially the vast majority that transitioned from Windows) expect these folders to exist. I believe the choice to not create these existed and still exists. Yet either all the distros that made that choice are history or they all made the opposite choice. I can say the same about other choices. I vastly prefer having a TRRS headphone jack and expandable storage on a phone. These do not appear to be priorities for most people.
  - adrusi 4y ago
    The choice not to create these directories basically doesn't exist, because all sorts of software will automatically create them if they don't exist, their creation isn't centrally orchestrated. A while back I was using a minimal i3-based desktop and when I launched transmission-gtk it thought I might want a "Downloads" folder, and would create it whenever it launched, even though it had been configures to download files elsewhere.
    - alexvoda 4y ago

MichaelCollins 4y ago

I've never seen anybody use these trashy preset directories as intended. Experienced users ignore them or delete them, using their own directory structure instead. Inexperienced users use one of them (usually Downloads or Desktop) while the others are treated as write-sometimes/read-never; e.g. sometimes they accidentally have files saved to those other directories which may as well be that file disappearing into the void never to be seen again. These presets only serve to confuse or at best annoy. These directories were well-intentioned originally but proved to be a huge mistake. They need to go away. (Edit: The above rant applies only to Downloads/Music/Video/etc. I think ~/.config and ~/.local are fine. I have no problem using those as intended, and I've seen plenty of other people using them too.)

pdntspa 4y ago
Windows users use them, Mac users use them, hell even on a fresh profile in Gnome I use them... It is a little weird to see htem on a server OS install though
- rgovostes 4y ago
  They exist on macOS and Windows but I tend to agree that these directories are not particularly useful for users. Apple software tries to organize files but it's a disaster: iTunes used to download movies to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies, now TV.app downloads them to ~/Movies/TV/Media/Movies (!), and videos I shoot on my iPhone end up in ~/Pictures.
  - pdntspa 4y ago
    There has always been a tragedy of the commons with these folders, nobody can agree on where a lot of stuff goes. Should my game saves go in Documents? What about Documents/My Games/Publisher? What about %APPDATA%/Publisher? Hell there's even a few in ~/My Games. Every new game, figuring out where the save data went is an adventure and it's cluttered up every folder it touches. And now for whatever reason everyone is being pushed to put user data in %APPDATA%, which I don't consistently remember how to get to without that shortcut. So who knows! I just looked up the save data location for Subnautica and it is (I shit you not): %AppData%\..\LocalLow\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica\Subnautica\SavedGames

petepete 4y ago

I like to lowercase mine so bin and projects don't look weirdly out of place. Thankfully it's totally customisable. https://github.com/peteryates/dotfiles/blob/master/xdg/.config/user-dirs.dirs https://github.com/peteryates/dotfiles/blob/master/xdg/.conf...

jmclnx 4y ago

I agree, but the OpenBSD did some nice things in regards to ~/Downloads Using unveil() and pledge(), OpenBSD hides many $HOME and system directories from Firefox and chrome. Thus an errant javascript will only see things in ~/Downloads So one nice use for these.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]