this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025

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519

XDG_CONFIG_HOME (lemmy.world)

submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) by alyth@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world

64 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The template of this meme is that of the man who cheerfully points his hand at a butterfly, asking "Is this a pigeon"?. In this meme, the man has been covered with icons of the applications IntelliJ, VSCode, Chromium and Signal. The butterfly which he points to is overlaid with the caption ".config". He asks "Is this a trash can?" At the bottom of the image, we see the command du -sh executed on the directories .config/chromium/ and .config/Code, yielding file sizes of 1016M and 83M respectively.

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[–] srestegosaurio@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

There's a dedicated 10th circle in hell for this people. As someone who runs a root-on-tmpfs system, PLEASE document which dirs your application is using.

It is a total pain, specially with non standar ones.

But tbf there are a lot of Linux devs who neither have read a single line of any Linux standard API.

XDG_DIR, Portals, Secrets, D-Bus, the Desktop file spec, Appstream… are there for you to read. 🥰

[–] renzev@lemmy.world 2 points 38 minutes ago

XDG_DIR, Portals, Secrets, D-Bus, the Desktop file spec, Appstream… are there for you to read. 🥰

Standard compliance is a total mess in the world of linux desktop apps. My pet peeve is that $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR should point to a customizeable tmpfs that apps can use to store temporary data. But just TRY setting to anything else besides /run/user/1000 lol. Half your apps will be broken. Even apps that are made by/for the freedesktop people (e.g. Helvum, the pipewire patchbay app) struggle with this lol. This spec came out in 2021 -- three years ago -- and it's already ossified to the point of being barely useful. At this point I don't blame devs who say "fuck it" and just dump their tempfiles into /tmp the way ~~god~~ dennis ritchie intended.

[–] Brewchin@lemmy.world 20 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

So much this. It's like these clowns don't read the XDG directory spec and think $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME are interchangeable, and even that cache files can be in either or both. No, one directory you need to backup for when things go sideways, and the other can go to /nev/dull.

I'm not a fan of ~/.local/share/ being the data directory (two directories deep seems stupid), but it's definitely where regular data belongs.

Never mind developers who, in 2025, still think their project is special enough for a $HOME dotfile/dotdir or - somehow worse - those who put $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/<weird-name>/subdir/[subdir/]. The latter strikes me as well-meaning Windows developers trying to follow best-practice-like-Microsoft-does, but it makes my teeth itch.

Rant over. :)

[–] renzev@lemmy.world 1 points 30 minutes ago

No, one directory you need to backup for when things go sideways, and the other can go to /nev/dull.

This is why so many people have a separate git repository for their config files and a scripts that symlinks or copies those files into the actual ~/.config.

[–] dan@upvote.au 7 points 2 hours ago

Windows developers trying to follow best-practice-like-Microsoft-does

I think the best practices on Windows are pretty similar to Linux, other than Windows usually using title case whereas Linux usually using lowercase. There's bad developers on both platforms :)

Windows equivalent to XDG_CONFIG_DIR is %appdata%, which is the roaming AppData directory.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 47 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

Better than dumping into ~/

[–] renzev@lemmy.world 3 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 33 minutes ago)

Archwiki has a huge list of apps that do this with instructions on how to force them to not do this. You might find it useful.

Personally though, I've given up on wrangling stubborn apps and just use flatpak and docker for everything. It can't crap in your ~/ if it doesn't have access to it!

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

I really need work on better use of containers

[–] benjaminb@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 8 hours ago

When I use a computer for a few months my ~/ always gets so “messy”, I hate it!

[–] pewpew@feddit.it 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I don't get why so many programs do this. This is ridiculous

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 2 hours ago

Often they were created before the XDG spec was widespread, and haven't been changed for backwards compatibility reasons or because nobody's been willing to change it.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

It gets worse, when I was doing a refine of a Mistral-7B, on both the Linux and windows rigs the default location was somewhere on my OS drive in either %appdata% or some .config/.cache bullshit which stored the entire LLM along with all checkpoints and whatnot.

Nutter. My C drive on windows is a 120GB, all my programs are on my Q drive in software RAID. With Linux I follow the same principle, all heavy files are on a separate partition.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago

Run containers and VMs. You have way more control.

[–] coherent_domain@infosec.pub 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

Why is separating the OS with files necessary? I don't think large files slows down the OS anymore, because of SSD.

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

For .config it isn't as important to me, but putting things that can be re-created in .cache (well the proper environment variable that defaults to .cache) is very nice because I don't need to back up all of that junk.

But it wouldn't be unreasonable to put something like .config in a git repo, and storing full history for large and frequently changing files is a waste of space if they aren't really "config".

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You could just add an exception to not backup .cache

[–] PoolloverNathan@programming.dev 3 points 1 hour ago

The point is that many programs completely ignore .cache's existence — when programs do actually use it, adding a backup exception is trivial, but having to manually find what's actually cache in .config (or, even worse, finding one SQLite database with the config and cache) complicates it.

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 12 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

It's not necessary, just really convenient when your OS breaks

[–] coherent_domain@infosec.pub 1 points 4 hours ago

Okay I prefer to use FDE for security, especially on laptops, so my data recovery is never going to be trivial, yet with a live environment, also not too difficult.

[–] Wrrzag@lemmy.ml 37 points 16 hours ago

Because it makes reinstalls really easy. You can just nuke your OS but everything else remains there safely.

[–] IceFoxX@lemm.ee 97 points 22 hours ago (21 children)

Well dont use chrom*

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 40 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

The signal community should band together and write a signal client that doesn't use the waste of space called electron. There is a rust library for signal and slint for cross platform UIs. Slint is even working (slowly) on mobile targets

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] yonder@sh.itjust.works 14 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

There already is one called Flare. It uses rust IIRC.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 4 points 10 hours ago

Thanks. I'll have a look at this!

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] oldfart@lemm.ee 2 points 9 hours ago

Non-flatpak🤮 link: https://gitlab.com/schmiddi-on-mobile/flare

[–] crony@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz 56 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I use ungoogled chromium, but only for sites that absolutelly don'y wanna work on firefox.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 27 points 17 hours ago (6 children)

I'm surprised. I haven't had a website not work with Firefox for a long time. I haven't even had to install chromium as a backup in almost two years now.

[–] benjaminb@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I actually use chromium to do watch party’s. As you can disable hardware acceleration and for some reason the Netflix DRM doesn’t work anymore. (So I can stream the video to friends on dc)

But otherwise I never had problems with Firefox.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Proxmox, when connected to a host, will not see symbols and instead type the numbers instead (shift+1 etc). But it will still type a character, and it's hidden from the user, so you end up screaming WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT until you try to sudo in fucking chrome and whoop works first try.

Found that like 9 months ago. Still pissed as fuck. Like 2h of my life gone, thought I fucked my root account, fucking pissing myself trying to copy data off before I do anything in case I was fucked.

PM needs to fix their shit.

E: Oh, cpanel recently broke too. I can login, but am immediately logged out because lack of a security token. That one might be because I'm using librewolf, but it was working a month ago so...

E2: synology, both nas and router, works sometimes in LW, but other times it loads the page but no content. This is regardless of if I am logged in and refresh, or if I'm just trying to login. Shit just doesn't reliably work. Chrome, it's fine.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I don't want to be that guy but it works for me. I use Proxmox all the time in Librewolf.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

With symbols in your VMs passwords?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 38 minutes ago

You guys are doing passwords?

Anyway I've never had issues with symbols but I also don't have a international keyboard. (Mine is US layout)

[–] pufferfisherpowder@lemmy.world 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Just yesterday I had shadow.tech's Cloudflare "vErIFY yOuR hUmAN" fail on me in Firefox. I had fucking paid for a month already otherwise that would have been enough to turn me off.

[–] toebhi@slrpnk.net 2 points 42 minutes ago

This always happens to me. How can one get around that (without using chrom*)

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I haven't had a website not work with Firefox for a long time.

Me too...mostly? But the cases I've seen or encountered are always government, financial, education, or medical websites with some super-bespoke "portal" that will simply act bizarre on Firefox.

It really sucks that it seems so common to just glance at some "market-share" data and, not just assume everybody must use Chrome, but go so far as to force them to.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago

They are out there. I also have it around for those occasions. More common that you'd expect. Almost always some shitty site needed for work that has problems.

[–] Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Firefox doesnt support web serial.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

Oh yeah that reminds me, to use the Graphene web installer, you need chrome. To revert to factory, chrome.

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[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 9 points 19 hours ago

Chrom, grant me my RAM....and if you do not listen, then the hell with you!

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[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 19 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

IntelliJ IDEA runs on a jvm right not a electron app??

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I think it might still be dropping executables in .config, stuff like the JDK or even its own software versions

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[–] projjalm@lemy.lol 14 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I like how electron shit's "configurations" are also trash

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago

You'd think they would do better. Isn't that part of the point of using Electron?

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