I honestly don’t think /Users is a problem (heck, I used time sharing systems where user homes were all over the place, and the original NeXT), but you can turn

I honestly don’t think /Users is a problem (heck, I used time sharing systems where user homes were all over the place, and the original NeXT), but you can turn off .DS_Store creation on network media (I think there is an equivalent one for removable media, can’t find it now): defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true Also, check if dot_clean is in your system.