• @guckfoogle@sh.itjust.works
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    322 years ago

    You might wanna backup your dotfiles somewhere remote too. I literally lost dotfiles that I’d been building up for years because I couldn’t remember the password to my Linux machine after coming back from vacation. Funny enough though, a couple hours after nuking my OS I magically remember my password.

    • @pitbuster@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Unless you disk was encrypted, you could have booted up a live distro and back up the files you needed (or even overwrite the shadow file to get a new password)

      • Frater Mus
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        42 years ago

        In the late 90s I taught an intro course for folks who wanted to run *nix boxen (Solaris, IIRC). On the afternoon of the last day I had them swap places after lunch and gain root access to each others’ machines. It was partly for root passwd recovery and other maintenance tasks, but also to demonstrate that physical access to the box was a serious issue.

    • Oof. Yeah, I once forgot my LastPass password literally less than 30 seconds after entering it on another device. Muscle memory versus active memory kind of thing.

      • ares35
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        22 years ago

        i couldn’t recite my most-used passwords if i tried. i would need to ‘air type’ them out while doing so.

    • @conc@lemmy.ml
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      182 years ago

      After two years of typing in the same boot pass on my same laptop at my same job I woke up one day and couldn’t remember it. Almost died trying. Right as I was reaching out to my admin it came to me.

  • @Urist@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Tangentially related: I recently learned that there are tools for handling dotfiles such as chezmoi and yadm. I would suppose that after spending some time on backing up the dotfiles that matter one can purge the remainders without much issue. I also remember some tool that was made for the purpose of cleaning $HOME, but can not recall its name (if anyone knows please let me know).

  • @nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    832 years ago

    Y’know what’s worse? When there’s no dot. Worse than that, it’s an undotted directory used to store a single config file. Ugh, unpleasant memories. 😒

      • unalivejoy
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        232 years ago

        That’s not the only folder go creates. There’s also ~/sdks/go1.xy

        • @pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          22 years ago

          Oh god, what? Is that new? Aside from the plethora of shit that are dotfiles living in ~ instead of under ~/.config, the only outlier I have at the moment is ~/go.

      • andrew
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        92 years ago

        That’s just the default location for what it’s worth. You can move GOPATH wherever you want.

    • @Chobbes@lemmy.world
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      62 years ago

      There’s a version control system called darcs that stores its configuration files in a _darcs/ directory in your project and it wounds my soul.

  • @Moonrise2473@lemmy.ml
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    112 years ago

    I’d like to set nautilus to show hidden files, but I can’t stand the amount of “trash” there’s in home

    Everyone is thinking “my app is the best, it totally deserves a ~/.myappisthebest directory”

  • tal
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    2 years ago

    They may not want their configuration stored in $HOME, for example:

    they’re on a machine that isn’t under their physical control and ~/.config is mounted over the network from their personal machine;

    That sounds like it’s a bad way to handle configuration, since among many other problems, it won’t work with the many programs that do have dotfiles in home directory, but even if that happened, you could just symlink it.

    they prefer to version control their configuration files using git, with a configuration directory managed over different branches;

    I do that. I symlink that config into a git-controlled directory. If OP plans to put his entire ~/.config in git, he is doing things wrong, because some of that needs to be machine-local.

    the user simply wants to have a clean and consistent $HOME directory and filesystem

    If whatever program you are using to view your home directory cannot hide those files, it is broken, as it does not work with a whole lot of existing software.

    less secure,

    If your home directory is “not secure”, you’re probably in trouble already.

    Like, there are reasons you may not want to put dotfiles in a homedir, but none of the arguments in the article are them.

    EDIT: I will ask developers to stop dumping directories and files that don’t start with a dot in people’s home directories, though. I gave up over twenty years ago and put my actual stuff under ~/m just to keep it from being polluted with all the other things that dump non-dotfiles/-dotdirs in a home directory. Looking at my current system, I have:

    • A number of directories containing video game saves and configuration. I am pretty sure that these are mostly bad Windows ports or possibly Windows programs under WINE that just dump stuff into a user’s home directory there (not even good on Windows). Some are Windows Steam games.

    • WINE apparently has decided that it’s a good idea to default to sticking the Windows home directory and all of its directories in there.

    • Apparently some webcam software that I used at one point.

    • A few logfiles

    • @PixxlMan@lemmy.world
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      12 years ago

      Somehow I’ve never considered using git for version controlling/version synchronizing anything other than exclusively code… Brb gonna git all my files.

    • @rockstarmode@lemmy.world
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      142 years ago

      I agree with most of your points. Just wanted to add that I use Git + GNU Stow to manage this exact situation and it works flawlessly.

      • @Klaymore@sh.itjust.works
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        22 years ago

        I just keep all my actual stuff in a separate /stuff partition, so my home folder is only config files. Then I use NixOS home-manager and Impermanence to manage the dotfiles.

      • tal
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        2 years ago

        Yeah, I think I tried it and it didn’t do something I wanted and so used a homebrew script for the same thing, but it or a similar package or script is definitely what I’d recommend.

        That should work with dotfiles in .config, in the home directory, any other config you want to be portable across machines, etc.

    • @PlexSheep@feddit.de
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      202 years ago

      I agree with most of your points, but I still think putting configs in the xdg dir instead of putting tons of dotfiles in $HOME is good practice.

      I find dotfiles to be that stuff that I want to edit easily, and xdg stuff to be that stuff that I don’t edit frequently (manually at least)

  • Gleddified
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    632 years ago

    One of my greatest pet peeves is random folders appearing in my home folder. Thanks for this

    • unalivejoy
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      2 years ago

      Let’s count them. (not including legacy or standard locations like .local, .config, or .cache, .ssh, and shell configuration files

      • .aws
      • .azure
      • .bun
      • .byobu
      • .cargo
      • .dbus
      • .docker
      • .dokku
      • .keychain
      • .kube
      • .minikube
      • .motd_shown
      • .node_repl_history
      • .npm
      • .nuxt
      • .nuxtrc
      • .nvm
      • .oh-my-zsh
      • .pack
      • .psql_history
      • .python_history
      • .redhat
      • .ruff_cache
      • .rustup
      • .selected_editor
      • .sqlite_history
      • .sudo_as_admin_successful
      • .tmux.conf
      • .tox
      • .ts_node_repl_history
      • .vim
      • .viminfo
      • .vimrc
      • .vscode-server
      • .wget-hsts
      • .yarn

      And a couple more, non-hidden files for Go.

      • go
      • sdk/go1.20
      • WasPentalive
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        2 years ago

        Why aren’t all of these just normal directories under either .local (for data files) or .config (for configuration)???

        Actually, I think the XDG directories should be under a single XDG directory either dotted or not (a better name would be OK with me) ~/xdg/Documents, ~/xdg/Music, ~/xdg/Pictures etc.

        • unalivejoy
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          52 years ago

          Documents, Music, etc actually are configurable. Just edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

          • WasPentalive
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            32 years ago

            I also had to (under KDE)

            • Edit the settings for each of the folders in Dolphin (The file manager)

            • Edit the location of the desktop folder in the settings found by right-clicking the desktop and going into “Configure Desktop and Wallpaper” Location.

            • Edit the show item by choosing Custom Location, and adding the XDG directory for the desktop. This setting may not stick.

        • @flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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          52 years ago

          That’s the beauty: XDG compliant applications are entirely configurable using standardized environment variables.

      • darcy
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        292 years ago

        i can almost ignore the hidden ones, but ~/go? no thats just rude

      • darcy
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        142 years ago

        afaik, tmux can use ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf or something, if ~/.tmux is not found