Protect your home, use xdg ninja
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Ninja can't help if the program does not want to cooperate :(
You can use a wrapper script on PATH that launches the app in a fake home wherever you want.
my favourite part is Steam throwing in a symlink, a broken symlink, and a directory of 4 files and 7 more symlinks that all point to a more reasonable point in ~/.local/share/steam/
Which indirectly led to this wild as fuck bug that nuked some poor user's data.
A YouTube video over an article? :(
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/qzZLvw2AdvM?si=FznMm9CQxD-da9S6
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Haha you just reminded me of that damn flashing broken steam sym link in my home folder, it's been there for years and I've yet to investigate or do anything about it.
It's there for ancient compatibility reasons and recreated when steam starts, iirc. I've looked a bit into removing it last year but didn't get far
lol that's great. Does flatpak Steam do that too? I can't see anything from Steam directly in my home directory, and I use the flatpak version.
Flatpak itself violates the xdg base dir spec by making ~/.var
Flatpaks can't just access your home directory.
Haven't used much of Linux before, can someone explain the joke?
Most software on Linux is configured to place their config files in ~/.config. Some others, like the ones in the pic, just dump them directly into your home folder.
The Windows equivilent would be instead of putting application data in the AppData folder, it throws it in Documents, My Games, or just in the home folder directly.
ah so like every fucking game and it's save files for some reason?
Better, it could be literally anywhere and there's nothing you can do about it. Also symlinks practically look like regular folders and files to most apps.
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... or just imagine all of it being thrown on the Desktop (the bare user directory is rarely visited in Windows)
Hahahaha oh man I know exactly what you're talking about too 😭 hate when they do that
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME is an environment variable that programs can (and should) read to determine the location for storing dotfiles (config files, kind of). Not reading (or caring about) the environment variable, and not adhering to the default of /home/username/.config/ results in them ending up in the home directory.
Yes.
Many applications have configuration files. Historically these files were placed in your home directory aka "on the floor". The variable mentioned defines a directory where these files should go. Many applications ignore this.
A non-linux version of this meme might go,
"Here is the pizza you ordered"
"Great, could you put it in my hands"
"Lol (throws pizza on floor)"
Firefox has an issue that's been open for 20 years regarding implementing the XDG Base Directory Specification.
Firefox is the biggest offender for me. ~/.mozilla instead of something sane like ~/.config/firefox
Even worse, Thunderbird doesn't save data in ~/.mozilla/thunderbird, but in ~/.thunderbird.
At least Thunderbird configs are stored in ~/.config/.mozilla/thunderbird. Right? Right...?
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It's one thing when they have legacy hardcode mountains preventing a standardisation, but I really dislike developers who just disagree with the standard and take away the choice as well and justify it with some made up problems with that standard.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/864
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735285
etc...
Archlinux Wiki even has an article about those.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory#Hardcoded
who would win?
dozens of conflicting standards on where to store files over years of poorly enforced linux development practice
vs
some symlink bois
for real tho, I discovered gnu-stow the other day and it looks like the ideal solution for this sorta stuff
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If plasma could put all their damn files inside a "plasma" folder that'd be great too.
I literally can't find a single plasma config file that i'd need to edit...
Meanwhile kde scattering everything in .config/
I love you all very much but just please be aware that "the floor" is literally where the files are supposed to go, according to the spec. I don't like it, you don't like it, nobody likes it. But that's why it's happening.
Relevant section quoted for the lazy:
User specific configuration files for applications are stored in the user's home directory in a file that starts with the '.' character (a "dot file"). If an application needs to create more than one dot file then they should be placed in a subdirectory with a name starting with a '.' character, (a "dot directory"). In this case the configuration files should not start with the '.' character.
You know everything on that site was written in 2004 or earlier, right? That hasn't been the relevant spec for a long, long time now. We use xdg for that now. Configs go in xdg_config_home.
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Set your config directory to be your home directory and outplay those apps
Pain
Don't forget Flatpak.
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