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”.
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
~/snapdirectory.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
Samesies.
Luckily I created mine as
projectsso 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.I do the same, source code lives in it.
What do you put in it? For me the logical place for that would be
~/Documents/projectsLmao, same
Y’all don’t just do everything out of your Downloads folder?
I thought I was the only one, it’s just so easy to use it as your base working folder. Things get organized out as whatever it is moves forward to some arbitrary point.
~ is kinda hard to reach. I just put everything in root so I just have to type / once to find everything.
/s
Everything is just in /. I patched directory support out of ext4.
My wife’s Windows 10 desktop can fit one more icon. Just need to overlap a few others here and there.
Perhaps your wife needs something like this?
Documents for me, but yeah
My man!
Those files all go in documents. Jesus, why are we doing it this way?
No documents are for documents.
You store git repo in your documents?!
We have a Programs folder for programs we’ve written ourselves. (Then a “repos” folder for stuff we’ve cloned.)
Absolutely. Some under a work subfolder, some under various other sub-folder depending on what they contain.
Yes
Actually they all go in nextcloud/projects
I always change the defaults to another place and to have another naming. Just camel casing those folders is already stupidly annoying. I guess one more silly one into another folder out of view.
I already do the following:
- media with images, music and videos inside
- changes to small case for desktop and download
- change documents to docs
- create another folder called shares which I moved the public folder inside.
- hide the templates folder that nobody knows what is it for, so it becomes .templates
- no idea what the projects is supposed to be about, maybe I can map it to the already existing dev folder…
hide the templates folder that nobody knows what is it for, so it becomes .templates
I think the templates folder is for the “New File” items, I forget how it works but you can make custom new files similar to new Text File, Empty File, etc
I like this idea. I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing for a while now, though it’s been a subdirectory of Documents.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.dirsto specify where you want files to go.
it’s excessive for me. I’ll continue putting my projects with my documents.
I’ve always had a projects folder, so this works for me I guess.
Me too! But now I’m thinking maybe I should capitalize the folder name
~/PROJECTS
Why capitalize? Drop all the vowels!
~/prjcts
Same, I picked it up from some random user I was watching.
It may as well be called ‘git folder’ because it’s almost exclusively used to clone ‘hmm, neat’ github repos and for my various ‘to do’ projects where I’ve gotten as far as running
git init.I have two folders for git though, my projects, and other people’s packages and such
That makes too much sense
Same I also keep one called “scratch” that is just for random one off shit
I used to have a scratch directory. Then I realized I can put stuff in /tmp/whatever, and it gets automatically deleted on reboot. I made a shell function that creates a /tmp subdirectory, and cds to it in one command.
Well, sometimes I want something more permanent than tmp
We’ve got a ~/tmp.
Should probably clean it out at some point.
That’s better than mine: ~/downloads/deleteme123
My downloads folder already removes files that are over a month old
But why are the names camel cased? It’s a little bit more annoying to type.
Yours are camel case? That’s weird. My folders are pascal case.
Because any normal person would want it upper cased. Most people never type these folder names.
Yes, Linux should appeal to the masses, otherwise we will never get rid of Windows. No, this doesn’t apply to anyone on Lemmy cause nobody on Lemmy right now truly qualify as “normal person”, statistically speaking.
i feel normal but nobody knows that i am wearing Batman socks.
Seconded, I hate that every file is all lowercase but my home directory if filled with Downloads, Videos, Documents, etc…
You can customize the names with a
~/.config/user-dirs.dirsfile. That will work on XDG-compliant programs. instructionscd downloads
nO sUcH FiLe oR DiReCtoRy
time for a new shell or enable ‘set completion-ignore-case on’ in bashrc
Windows user appeal?
And Mac.
Hell, Mac even capitalizes /Users (where home folders are)!
– Frost
Appeals to Java programmers too.
So does self-flagellation, but we don’t provide default whips in the Kernel.
Pure bloat. I will be personally switching to the Hurd Kernel just because of this change.
/s right?
I never even thought to check. Was Games not a default folder?
I wish they would combine Pictures and Videos into Media.
And Music? But they’d still need subfolders to keep the content organised and then it begs the question why hide it all away a whole layer lower down from the Home folder?
Pictures and Videos typically refer to personal media, whereas music would refer to professional media. I don’t think grouping them into a single media directory would usually make sense.
Oh, that’s what I do, you just have to customize it. I have media with images, music and videos inside.
And that’s where it should stop.
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
Why? What would I want to have the folder for? I never had it with any OS I ran. It’s either in the documents, or I’d create my own directory with the name I want. I have different types of projects, so I’d prefer organising my directories myself.
I wasn’t sure the fuck this directory keeps appearing in my home, kept removing it over and over again. Can I disable that?
At least projects is an understandable purpose, I don’t use the
Templates, Desktop and Public foldersat all, and aside from desktop (which I know is a workflow thing that I don’t even use) I would need someone to explain them to me. I’m guessing public would be for a multi-user system, templates maybe for printing stuff (I do not).I think Templates is for cases where you make lots of documents that have the same starting structure. Like a letter head, or a spreadsheet you recreate every month. The starting structure can be saved in Templates so you can copy it ever time you need it. Maybe I’ll put a Nix flake template there instead of always copying from a recent project.
Public might be for files that other users have read access to on a multi user system? Or maybe for network shares? Or a personal website? I’m not sure. Edit: I found a comment saying that Gnome file sharing uses Public.
Templates is super useful! You can make a copy of any file you put there in any other directory with right click > new. Some examples I usually have in my computers are ‘newFile’, ‘newTextFile.txt’ (just blank text files), ‘newTextDocument.odt’, ‘newSpreadsheet.ods’… but once you start you’ll find many more things to add like, if you’re a programmer or web dev you’ll put files with all the boilerplate already in them, if you design fashion you’ll put an image of a figure template to draw over (in your format of choice), you have to make monthly schedules? Throw a table/spreadsheet with the days, format, colours… already in it. Anything you find yourself repeating is a good candidate to go into your templates folder.
Interesting. I guess I’m not that far along (sort of stalled now), and quite possibly may never really need that.
Though for this one:
Some examples I usually have in my computers are ‘newFile’, ‘newTextFile.txt’ (just blank text files)
creating a blank file and renaming to .txt before editing seems good enough for me.
Templates are auto-used by some software, but I don’t understand why it’s not hidden. E.g. .templates or some .app/share/templates. As not many people would ever use it, and those who will would find the location easily.
Desktop, I never used it, but I understand the workflow. I used it as a quick directory to send some files, which I could symlink. Some people use it. And some DEs show desktop files.
Music and videos, I see no point. Not many people use them at all, and for me those were separate disks (which I never needed mounted in my home). Now, it’s all separate machines (for self-hosted media content and servers).
I use only documents and downloads, and in general, that’s enough for me. Also I use some top level directories, and I name them myself. All my files are my projects, I see no point in having any other files in my home.
I have a .hidden file to hide the rest.
I do use music and video (Flash animations in video too), though yeah they have been moved to slower drives (because data, easier migration). I use XFCE but don’t use desktop icons.
Aha, it’s in the article:
Don’t like the new Projects directory? Just delete it. The xdg-user-dirs utility will not try to create it again. The default location for this directory will be moved to your home directory.
It recreates them for me.
Power users, who want more control, can edit the ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs configuration file and modify it to control what goes where.
This might help, I guess.
