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Usama Subhani
Usama Subhani

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How to Keep Home Directory Clean?

I hate it when every program stores it's config and cache files in the home directory.

Have you ever felt that?

How do you deal with it?

# Run this in your home directory to count the number of files.
ls -la | wc -l

Top comments (6)

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Angad Sharma

The number is 139 for me. This is primarily due to some programs not adhereing to the XDG_CONFIG standards and dumping their config files in the home directory.

All configuration files should be in the ~/.config directory. If only developers made programs that adhere to this guideline.

How do you suggest I manage the files dumped on my home dir due to this annoyance?

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Usama Subhani

It's frustrating, how some developers completely ignore this standard.

For some programs, you can manually set config/cache directories in ~/.profile

For example, for zsh you can set ZDOTDIR

Not a general solution but better than nothing. I may write a post about it after some research.

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Angad Sharma

That'd be great :)

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Vlastimil Pospichal

81

No problem, 27 items are visible only.

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Usama Subhani

Nice. I have seen setups with over 150.

Looks like I'm the only one who is bothered with it.

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Vlastimil Pospichal

I have some directories with >2k source files. No problem.