Simon said on Sat, 23 Oct 2021 15:00:26 +0100

>Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
>>>> Might I suggest $HOME/bin :-)
>>>
>>> ~/bin isn't ideal for two reasons:
>>>
>>> 1) It's integrated with all sorts of config, cache, and who knows
>>> what, and can easily be lost or wiped out in a re-installation.
>>
>> In the case of $HOME/bin getting lost or wiped out in a
>> re-installation I'd argue you have bigger problems than just losing
>> $HOME/bin. You have most likely lost all of your $HOME, and maybe
>> even other users' $HOME as well.
>
>Agreed.
>The most logical place for personal stuff is in your $HOME.

Well, yes, it would have been logical. But everybody, and I mean
everybody --- The distros, the standards makers, the dweebs at
Freedesktop.org, everybody made a flinking mess of $HOME. Is the config
for program myapp in ~/.myapp.rc, ~/.config/myapp/*, ~/.myapp/*? Gotta
love the way Python puts its cache in ~/__pycache__ instead of
~/.cache/__pycache__, where it can be discarded along with all other
unnecessary cache. I have a ~/node_modules tree with over 300 files,
and I'm pretty sure node.js installation put them there. Directories
"~/Schember, John" and
"~/Litt, Steve" were kindly contributed by Calibre. Gotta love those
spaces and commas.

At this point I can't be sure because I run a rolling release, but I
think ~/Music, Documents and ~/Videos were put there by the distro ---
I'd have no reason to do that. They could have put all three within
something called ~/Media, and called the current ~/Media ~/Automounts.
But even moving them like that doesn't change the fact that some of
your documents were produced by you and can never be replaced, and
others were things that could be re-bought if lost. This has a huge
impact on backup. For a *Personal Computer*, $HOME is a zoo, and I
either have to live with it, reorganize it only to get broken again
with the next major upgrade, or violate FHS.

Parodying Billy Joel, I didn't start the fire.

> <a bit
>tongue in cheek> If it’s a mess at home, then tidy up a bit

This would be much more true if not for the fact that a bunch of
invaders called upgrades would again mess up my home.

> - better
>than deciding home is too much of a mess and effectively just moving
>house to start again at another home.

Let's examine the preceding sentence fragment. Is it really better to
try to manage the mess if the new home would be free and the invader
upgrades couldn't touch my new house?

I'm not saying everybody should do it my way, but what I don't
understand is the resistance to a method with no cost, at least as long
as I'm in charge of the computer, which will be til the day I die.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques