this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I absolutely despise the following directories: Documents, Music, Pictures, Public, Templates, Videos. Why? Because applications randomly dump stuff into these directories and fill them with junk files. I don't want any application putting anything into directories I actually use, unless I explicitly tell them to. It is not possible to keep your files organized if applications randomly dump trash files into them.
Same shit happens on Windows. Games will just install their shit literally all over OS with no rhyme or reason to it.
Why can't the save game and config.ini just be in the main god damn game directory? Nobody knows.
You'd lose all save games every time you uninstall the game. We already had that in DOS/Win9x days and I am very happy that we moved away from this. Static program data and generated data should be clearly separated.
In Linux we have the XDG Base Directory spec for that, that gives you directories for cache, config, state and data, so everything is nicely separated. The only problem is that not every app follows it, bug reports can help.
I find Android handles this by far the worst. They have the core right idea with permissions that makes it impossible for games to write outside of their assigned directories, but the way they handle it your savegames go into an area that will be deleted when you uninstall the app. So the risk of losing savegames is extremely high. The alternative is that games require SD card permissions and than just write wherever they want. It's basically all just a dark pattern to force games into using the Google Play service for cloud saves. Games that lose state and restart when you switch apps are also great.
I mean, in Windows they literally have a "saved games" folder and almost no games use it. I too hate that most fucking games have to save their shit to the Documents directory. That's the directory FOR MY FUCKING DOCUMENTS, NOT GAME SAVEDATA