I do this on my own machine. The visible stuff I used to keep in my home directory is now in a separate partition mounted on ~/Desktop. I've noticed just one downside: cd no longer takes me to a useful place. So I have an alias called cdd that takes me to Desktop and I'm trying to remember to use it, and I've changed .bash_aliases to cd there as well, so shells start in Desktop rather than the real home directory.
Other than that, I like this arrangement just fine. My OSes can all share the Desktop and have their own /home and ~/ directories. On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 6:32 AM, Rusi Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thursday, November 27, 2014 8:00:05 AM UTC+5:30, Serge wrote: > > 2014/11/16 Peter Nieman wrote: > > > Has anyone ever wondered where all these funny directories like > ~/.cache, > > > ~/.config, ~/.local or even ~/Desktop (with a capital D) came from that > > > appeared in Debian after upgrading to - was it Lenny? Here's an answer: > > > http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html > > > > People often misunderstand what XDG standards were created for. > > > > Imagine that you're writing some graphical application in those old days > > before XDG standards appeared. And you want to put a link to it to the > main > > menu of your DE/WM. Where would you put it? > ~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications? > > ~/.kde/share/applnk? Maybe .icewm/menu? Or all of them? What if you want > > to autostart it on login? ~/.kde/Autostart? ~/.kde/share/autostart? > > ~/.gnome2/autostart? > > > > The problem arises when MULTIPLE INDEPENDENT apps need SAME files. > > So they came together and created XDG standard. It looks like: > > [autostart-spec] > > system-wide autostart files are placed in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/autostart/ > > user-specific overrides go to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart/ > > "based on the desktop base directory specification". > > [menu-spec] > > .menu files are placed in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/ > > .desktop files are placed in $XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications/ > > user overrides go to $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications/ and > $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/menus > > "according to the desktop base directory specification". > > and so on. > > > > The "Base Directory Specification" itself is just html page to reference, > > a base for other XDG specifications, that's why it's called "base". > > As its original author said [1]: > > > XDG Base Directory spec is intended for use by other specification. > > > For example the XDG Menu specification and Autostart specification > > > refer to the XDG Base Directory specification instead of reinventing > > > their own filesystem locations / hierarchy. > > It just gives the meaning to directories, used by *other XDG standards*, > > which brought peace and clarity to the mess of desktop environments. > > > > Those XDG standards were created by "X Desktop Group" only to define > > unified directories for COMMON files of multiple X desktop environments, > > not for some rogue applications to hide their own private files. > > Each of files placed in those directories is extensively documented > > by other XDG standards. > > > > Later some people started to abuse those directories and put there files, > > that never supposed to be there. Those people don't really think about > > standards or unification. Usually they just enable displaying hidden > files > > in their file manager, see a lot of dotfiles in a home directory and > think > > that "this is wrong". They start searching how to "fix" this, find xdg > > basedir-spec, and use it as an excuse for moving ~/.appname files, to > > ~/.config/appname, or worse, split them among .config, .local, .cache... > > They don't think about /etc/xdg, they don't read FHS or other XDG > standards, > > they don't care about people who have to do 2-4 times more work to find > and > > migrate settings of selected application to another machine, they just > > don't want to see dotfiles. > > > > But don't blame XDG standard for that, blame people abusing it > > to reduce the number of dotfiles in their home directory. > > > > [1] https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg02114.html > > -- > > Serge > > I have a question along these lines: > > Years ago when we used computers, many people used one machine -- > centrally administered. > > Nowadays one person uses many machines > 1. Simply multiple hardware > 2. Multiple OSes on the same h/w > 3. Other more fancy (cloud) usage > > Just staying with 2. for now and that too only Linux, its a good > idea to map the One-me <--> Many OSes to > One /home <--> Many 'slashes' (eg Debian on sda5, Debian 32 on > sda7 ubuntu on sda6 etc) > > However there are some issues: if the software-versions in these > dont match up then its precisely these XDG files that tread on > each others' > toes across OSes. > > One solution that Ive been toying with is as follows: > 1. Have one real My-home partition > 2. Keep /home as part of the OS-file system, so that > each OS can mess around with its own 'XDG's' > > I wonder if people have tried this (or something similar) and > any downsides > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > listmas...@lists.debian.org > Archive: > https://lists.debian.org/ba47c259-1d40-4203-aace-499d0218f...@googlegroups.com > > -- Kevin O'Gorman #define QUESTION ((bb) || (!bb)) /* Shakespeare */ Please consider the environment before printing this email.
