Re: XDG and Freedesktop

On 6/30/25 11:50, Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

Unix ... has dot files.

Way too many of them. How many are there in your $HOME?
>
The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

 Does it? Or does it just create a new closet to sweep them into?
 $ ls -a $HOME |grep -c '^[.]'
72
$ find ~/.config -type f |wc
     305     327   21490
$
 

Bunch of big "if"s there.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes. They're
not some "fringe" group as you might think.

 Yeah, but I run plenty of programs that don't use those libraries and
are unlikely to do so. Is ksh ever going to use ~/.config/profile ? (Is
bash?) xfig is a tool I still use and like, but it most certainly is not
using a file dialog from this century.
 Not all the world is Linux, and tools like xfig predate Linux.
 Also XDG has a very limited understanding of how people may organize
files. I don't have a "templates" directory, I'm not even sure what I'd
put in one. I don't have a "music" directory, and I don't need one.
 Here are the directories I want to use to organize things:
    $HOME/src # my own programs
   $HOME/packages # tar balls and the like
   $HOME/builds # build root for packages
   $HOME/notes # personal text files, including email
   $HOME/bin # where my programs live
   $HOME/lib # where my libraries live
   $HOME/man # where my man pages live
   $HOME/images # photos and no-photos
   $HOME/tmp # temporary storage, eg downloads
   $HOME/video # video files
 No capital letters in names. I co-opt some of the XDG settings to use
these, but that's working around the library instead of with it. (Eg. I
use $HOME/tmp for "templates" simply because of similar letters.)
 

If you run a Linux GUI, then you already have them.

 I know that the files on on the disk, I dispute that I use them. At
any one time I'm usually running just the following windowed programs:
      xterm (x many times)
     Firefox
     Deluge
     icewm components
 On a temporary basis, I start, run, and quit programs like feh, xpdf,
mplayer, gimp, xfig, vuescan. I don't think I have used any others on
Linux in the last two months. Icons and menus are not a significant part
of how I use icewm. Even the firefox process I've been using for the
last week or two right now was started from a command line in an xterm.
 Elijah
------
prefers the login on console and start X manually model of Unix

Well that is your preference but maybe you had better write your own
Operating System using the ideas you have.. Speaking of such things
on the AmigaOS up to 3.9 we used clearly labeled directories into which
we were responsible for installing various components manually and
adding stuff to the Startup-Script and the User Startup. We had no
protection but if we wanted to use stuff from the Aminet which is
still extant we had to learn how to do things.
With GNU/Linux I had to learn new stuff but it is far less
labor intensive on my distribution, PCLinuxOS. We have a more
easily used tool to do updates which are coming at a good rate
considering all that we habe so many libraries and commands
to keep updated for security and for functionality.
So write your own system but you might take a look at
all the other systems which have been used. AmigaOS was
evolved from TRIOS. AmigaOS had lots of problems but it
was a true Personal Computer OS.  So is PCLinuxOS.
bliss-Dell Precision 7730-PCLOS 2025.06- Linux 6.12.35 pclos1-KDE Plasma 5.27.11