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”.
Those files all go in documents. Jesus, why are we doing it this way?
Actually they all go in nextcloud/projects
Pure bloat. I will be personally switching to the Hurd Kernel just because of this change.
Y’all don’t just do everything out of your Downloads folder?
~ 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!
But why are the names camel cased? It’s a little bit more annoying to type.
Seconded, I hate that every file is all lowercase but my home directory if filled with Downloads, Videos, Documents, etc…
cd downloads
nO sUcH FiLe oR DiReCtoRy
You can customize the names with a
~/.config/user-dirs.dirsfile. That will work on XDG-compliant programs. instructions
Windows user appeal?
Appeals to Java programmers too.
So does self-flagellation, but we don’t provide default whips in the Kernel.
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.
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.
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 never even thought to check. Was Games not a default folder?
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).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.
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
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.
That’s better than mine: ~/downloads/deleteme123
My downloads folder already removes files that are over a month old
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?
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
