Why hide the system and config dirs?

Why hide the system and config dirs?

Posted Apr 15, 2004 15:24 UTC (Thu) by jalexstark (guest, #5742)
In reply to: Why hide the system and config dirs? by Duncan
Parent article: The User-Accessible Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Absolutely. Linux is beginning to look like MS in this regard. Hidden directories are almost as annoying as hidden file extensions.

My home directory is a mess, and I can't clean it up.

Principles:
* Have one dir for config, one dir for Desktop, one dir for personal software, one dir for volatile (non-backup) stuff.
* Don't hide things as an excuse not to clean up a mess, eg configuration.
* Don't make things so simple for the idiot that lead to unnecessary confusion, eg file extension hiding.
* Make backups easy, eg provide a way of getting the browser cache out of harm's way.

I have solved these so far by creating multiple personal directories such as /home/tmp.joe as well as /home/joe.

I think that a good way forward would be to phase out $HOME and replace with $HOMECONFIG, $HOMECACHE and $HOMEMAIN, or something universally agreeable. It would be trivial for s/w to use these.

[This comment was provided with the support of a battery backup, ;)]

Alex

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