It may look like a small addition, but standardizing something many Linux users already do can improve workflows, application behavior, and even documentation over time.

If you are using a rolling release distro like Arch, you might have noticed that your home directory now has a new member, a new folder called “Projects”.

For as long as I remember, Linux has always had a set of default folders under the home directory. Usually they are Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos and Downloads. Templates, Desktop and Public folders are also there.

Now we have a new addition in the form of “Projects”.

  • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Honestly I say just let the user decide what goes in their home directory. I always get annoyed at all the random garbage in there. There should be a specific place that is user owned that isn’t filled with cruft and configuration files

    • RamenJunkie@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, I have essentially never used these folders unless a program sticks something there by default (mostly pictures).

        • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          2 months ago

          A thing I started doing years ago, to combat trashing to ~/Desktop or ~/Downloads:

          Set /tmp as your default download directory.

          At least for me, almost everything I download is just ephemeral and would collect dust

          Putting it there causes it to be cleaned up on the next reboot. No more piles of junk on the desktop (the virtual one at least. Don’t ask about my physical desktop)

          • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
            0·
            2 months ago

            That’s a good idea until you download a 10GB file and you wonder why you’re out of RAM :P

            I use /tmp as a temp folder for yt-dlp (it is faster than an HDD when adding metadata and subs to the video), and I’ve ran out of RAM before by downloading a video too big… Silly me, my laptop only has 8GB.

    • TheV2@programming.dev
      0·
      2 months ago

      The user does decide, XDG user directories are optional and configurable. Since they are already established, user-friendly distros / desktop environments already pre-install them.

      And what speaks against just using a new directory within your home directory as your “specific place that is user owned that isn’t filed with cruft and configuration files”?

      • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        It’s only optional and configurable if it’s respected. Which often times it’s not due to convention.

        And I do already actually, it’s just weird that I have to.

        It’s 100% one of those carry overs from earlier days of computing and Linux not having great standards only great conventions. Like /bin vs /usr/bin

        • TheV2@programming.dev
          0·
          2 months ago

          Could you elaborate how the configuration might not be respected? Do you mean that you’ve often encountered applications that save files to hard-coded paths and do not even let you change the destination path?

          If you ask me, that’s just bad software design. If the software is open-source, there is the option to request the developers to read the actual path of the respective well know directory from the XDG environment variables or allow configuration.

  • who@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Sigh… Yet another thing pushed by the self-appointed nannies at freedesktop.org that I will have to manually undo on practically every new account.

    At least it will probably be configurable, unlike Canonical’s infamous ~/snap directory.

      • who@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I don’t mind that one, since .var doesn’t clutter my home dir and is only created if I use Flatpak. It follows unix conventions, stays out of my way, and is only a few lowercase letters to type if I choose to work with it.

          • who@feddit.orgEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            I don’t know what you’re referring to. How would changing the location of dotfiles make backups easier?

              • who@feddit.orgEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                I guess I didn’t think of that approach because it wouldn’t work for me. I use a lot of tools that follow the long established convention of putting dotfiles directly under $HOME, so I back up $HOME and exclude things like cache and trash.

  • diaphragm w*rkplace@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Idk, XDG is weird.
    “Music”, “Documents”, “Downloads”, “Public” and “Templates” are in Ukrainian;
    “Public” and “Downloads” are duplicated in English;
    “Desktop” is just English;
    “Images” is in Russian for me for some reason.

    No Projects despite me updating recently, I guess it just gave up.

  • promitheas@programming.dev
    0·
    2 months ago

    Everyone complaining, and here I am not having noticed the change because I’ve created that directory for myself years ago :-P

    Personally its for organisation

    • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      2 months ago

      Luckily I created mine as projects so I don’t have to worry about it writing a bunch of shit into my actual projects folder, or having to fix the xdg setting to disable it.

      • promitheas@programming.dev
        0·
        2 months ago

        All my projects, which to be fair are mostly programming.

        ~/Documents/Projects doesn’t make sense to me because theyre not strictly documents. In documents i have - well, documents like bill receipts, forms ive filled in, etc…

        My projects are a first-order thing for me if that makes sense, so it makes sense to have them in the top-level of my home.

        • naught101@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          Right, for me “documents” is just “personal files”. I used to have it called that, but then I just had and empty dir sitting there unused…

          I don’t like putting things in home because then files get mixed up with config and cache and crap, and it’s more annoying to search

  • jcr@jlai.luFrançais
    0·
    2 months ago

    Even if I am against this kind of “defaults”, today I learned how you customize this for any folder in the home directory !

    For linux based system, you do like told in https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs/

    ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs specifies the current set of directories for the user. This file can also be modified by users (manually or via applications) to change the directories used. Note: To disable a directory, point it to the homedir. If you delete it it will be recreated on the next login.

    So at last I disabled Music, Templates, Pictures and Videos . Cleaner Home !

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Now make all of default XDG directories lowercase. Nothing else is capitalized in the file system - why do these directories get an exception?

    • naught101@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      This is the way. Everything I created in folder in Documents. Everything I downloaded in downloads. Home should be otherwise empty, except for all the left-over dot-folders that old software leaves lying around.

    • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I made SO MANY directories under home that could have just been ~/Projects that I’m annoyed with myself for not doing something so simple.

      … I’ll be using the projects directory heavily going forward

      • andyburke@fedia.io
        0·
        2 months ago

        As someone who has used ~/Projects for years and has syncing and other setup around it I am (very slightly) terrified this change could somehow fuck with me.

        Please let this just be a mkdir call that will fail.

        • hallettj@leminal.spaceEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I also use a Projects folder. It looks like it probably won’t break anything. Apps might start putting stuff there by default, hopefully in sensible subdirectories. There’s a note in the article that you can create ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to specify where you want files to go.

        • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Nope. Only makes for new installs, and only uses it as a save spot default if the application asks for it. Should be no change at all.

            • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              When I read it originally (a bit back, maybe a week or two ago) it was new installs that was noted, though new users would make sense.

              I guess I’ll find out soon enough on a test box.

    • nightmare786@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      shouldn’t have even started imo. it’s hard for me to believe creating a projects folder is done often enough that people can’t just continue to make their own