4 ms·

Pro tip: don't put your stuff in your $HOME directory. $HOME is for applications to pollute. Put your stuff literally anywhere else.

by bmacho 3y ago

computerfriend 3y ago
$HOME is where my terminal and file manager start. It's not reasonable to give up on this prime directory real estate.
- bananskalhalk 3y ago
  That's only two applications to configure though.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    The `~` path (and `cd` with no arguments, to get there) are also part of the prime real estate. It's as if these polluters think you'll enjoy accessing their stuff via `~/<tab>` which might or might not be true.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - eternityforest 3y ago
      Polluters probably assume you'll never access anything at all except through dedicated apps, and bookmarks. In my case it's mostly true but it's still icky and ugly to see a crowded home dir.
    - bananskalhalk 3y ago
      Yeah, but that is still one application. You might come fr enough with CDPATH and configuring .inputrc to do something smart with ^m and the %-character (for the root of your document folder). If it will be enough, I don't know. It might be enough for some, but it is still something which can be done without getting the maintainers of openssh to agree with the idea of a clean ~.
chasil 3y ago
My ORACLE_HOME is in /home/oracle. It's just supposed to work like that (leaving all of the /u01/app references aside).
bshacklett 3y ago
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not. $HOME is the one directory which belongs to the user. In some cases, it might even be encrypted with a user-owned key. I can’t imagine being comfortable putting my files anywhere _outside_ of the home directory. That feels like going back to the DOS / Win3.x days where hard drives were the wild west.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mturmon 3y ago
  I follow the above advice. My personal stuff is in $HOME/$MY_FIRSTNAME. I can organize this directory any way I want to, e.g. by project, time, purpose, whatever. It’s my stuff. The stuff in $HOME is then more “the computer’s stuff.” (E.g., on MacOS, Photos, Desktop, Downloads - that’s where the computer dumps that stuff.) The other place is where I put things. This turns out to work quite well. It allows me to be unconcerned when some application wants to put something in $HOME.
  - eternauta3k 3y ago
    Exactly, or simply "$HOME/a" for less typing.
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      I too follow this advice. I am the only user on my system. I would put all my stuff directly into /home if that were an option which was unlikely to have huge gotchas at some point.
  - bshacklett 3y ago
    I read the original comment as recommending against putting _anything_ in $HOME. Your solution is far more palatable.
- Linux-Fan 3y ago
  To me its a sane choice on my own single-user machine. I used to create a top level `/data` directory to put my stuff into (before Android was widespread :) ). Nowdays, my data resides in `/data/main`. This scheme has served me well for more than 10a and through various OS migrations (Windows -> Ubuntu -> Debian). I don't want to have all this `.cache` and similar stuff to take up my expensive backup storage, nor do I want to waste time cleaning up after all the applications that create/expect files in `$HOME` or think this a sensible place to put executable files. I don't want arbitrary applications (heard of tracker?) to start indexing my files and waste CPU on that etc. Also I don't believe in /home being portable across multiple Linux distributions because e.g. different application versions might require config files to be migrated. Hence I opt for `/data` that can safely be shared across multiple systems because it contains actual data and not some OS-related state files. On multi-user systems, the `/data` approach doesn't scale. There, I prefer to do just as boomboomsubban writes: I create a subdirectory in $HOME (usually, I call it `wd`, the "working directory") and treat that like my local `/data/main`. For large/temporary files (e.g. application downloads etc.) I add a `$HOME/large` directory to keep the `wd` reasonably small in such cases such that I can again include it in backups without having to worry about the size. YMMV

Pro tip: don't put your stuff in your $HOME directory. $HOME is for applications to pollute. Put your stuff literally anywhere else.

by bmacho 3y ago

Pro tip: don't put your stuff in your $HOME directory. $HOME is for applications to pollute. Put your stuff literally anywhere else.

computerfriend 3y ago

$HOME is where my terminal and file manager start. It's not reasonable to give up on this prime directory real estate.

bananskalhalk 3y ago
That's only two applications to configure though.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  The `~` path (and `cd` with no arguments, to get there) are also part of the prime real estate. It's as if these polluters think you'll enjoy accessing their stuff via `~/<tab>` which might or might not be true.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Polluters probably assume you'll never access anything at all except through dedicated apps, and bookmarks. In my case it's mostly true but it's still icky and ugly to see a crowded home dir.
  - bananskalhalk 3y ago
    Yeah, but that is still one application. You might come fr enough with CDPATH and configuring .inputrc to do something smart with ^m and the %-character (for the root of your document folder). If it will be enough, I don't know. It might be enough for some, but it is still something which can be done without getting the maintainers of openssh to agree with the idea of a clean ~.

chasil 3y ago

My ORACLE_HOME is in /home/oracle. It's just supposed to work like that (leaving all of the /u01/app references aside).

bshacklett 3y ago

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not. $HOME is the one directory which belongs to the user. In some cases, it might even be encrypted with a user-owned key. I can’t imagine being comfortable putting my files anywhere _outside_ of the home directory. That feels like going back to the DOS / Win3.x days where hard drives were the wild west.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mturmon 3y ago
I follow the above advice. My personal stuff is in $HOME/$MY_FIRSTNAME. I can organize this directory any way I want to, e.g. by project, time, purpose, whatever. It’s my stuff. The stuff in $HOME is then more “the computer’s stuff.” (E.g., on MacOS, Photos, Desktop, Downloads - that’s where the computer dumps that stuff.) The other place is where I put things. This turns out to work quite well. It allows me to be unconcerned when some application wants to put something in $HOME.
- eternauta3k 3y ago
  Exactly, or simply "$HOME/a" for less typing.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    I too follow this advice. I am the only user on my system. I would put all my stuff directly into /home if that were an option which was unlikely to have huge gotchas at some point.
- bshacklett 3y ago
  I read the original comment as recommending against putting _anything_ in $HOME. Your solution is far more palatable.
Linux-Fan 3y ago
To me its a sane choice on my own single-user machine. I used to create a top level `/data` directory to put my stuff into (before Android was widespread :) ). Nowdays, my data resides in `/data/main`. This scheme has served me well for more than 10a and through various OS migrations (Windows -> Ubuntu -> Debian). I don't want to have all this `.cache` and similar stuff to take up my expensive backup storage, nor do I want to waste time cleaning up after all the applications that create/expect files in `$HOME` or think this a sensible place to put executable files. I don't want arbitrary applications (heard of tracker?) to start indexing my files and waste CPU on that etc. Also I don't believe in /home being portable across multiple Linux distributions because e.g. different application versions might require config files to be migrated. Hence I opt for `/data` that can safely be shared across multiple systems because it contains actual data and not some OS-related state files. On multi-user systems, the `/data` approach doesn't scale. There, I prefer to do just as boomboomsubban writes: I create a subdirectory in $HOME (usually, I call it `wd`, the "working directory") and treat that like my local `/data/main`. For large/temporary files (e.g. application downloads etc.) I add a `$HOME/large` directory to keep the `wd` reasonably small in such cases such that I can again include it in backups without having to worry about the size. YMMV