How do you lay out your home directory?

10

How do you lay out your home directory? ☶ ask practices
authored by mlw 3 years ago | 23 comments | +15, -2 already posted, -3 off-topic

23

I’m migrating to a new laptop and am taking the opportunity to rethink how I lay out my home directory. I’d love to hear how people are doing this in 2020. What does your home directory look like? (This question reminds me of this tweet.)

Right now I have:

the standard OS folders (~/Music, ~/Documents, etc)
~/.local/bin (in my $PATH), ~/.local/share, ~/tmp
~/go (this feels particuarly ugly!)
~/backups
~/p (i.e. projects)
- ~/p/code (personal projects, each directory in here is a repo)
- ~/p/$employer (each directory under these is usually a repo)
- ~/p/study (personal projects with the specific goal of study, e.g. tutorial notebooks, coursera materials)
~/p/ref (reference materials, manuals, PDFs, etc.)
~/p/talks

What about you?

Here are some examples of the things I’m thinking about. These are just examples! I’m interested in unknown unknowns too! What else should I be optimizing for?

Where do I put stuff I don’t want to backup, e.g. build artifacts, docker images, virtual environments, node_modules, etc. Do I put these in their customary location (often alongside the code) and blacklist (potentially a lot of fragile) paths and patterns, or do I put them all in a single place I can blacklist with a single pattern in my backup software? This has been a particular pain point for me. Would it be practical to change how I backup so I can just naively back up everything and forget about his?
Have there been any tooling improvements that make it easier to care less about layout in the same way gmail made many of us no longer care about filing emails (e.g. search, command line navigation, etc.)
To what extent do I fight my OS (which happens to be macOS) on things like ~/Documents, ~/Pictures?
Where do things like Dropbox, iCloud, etc. fit in (I don’t use either of these seriously, and I don’t trust iCloud at all), but they’re occasionally useful.

1. 8
  
  soc 3 years ago | link
  
  I make $HOME read-only and then have only specific sub-directories like audio, docs, apps, code etc.
  
  Dot files follow XDG spec, except a few applications that have been grand-fathered in, and I’m working on replacing/fixing them.
2. 10
  
  hwj e-mailed 3 years ago | link
  
  We had this question 5 months ago (with 54 comments):
  
  https://lobste.rs/s/zpw6py/how_do_you_organize_your_home_directory
  1. 1
    
    WilhelmVonWeiner 3 years ago | link
    
    It feels like a particularly masturbatory “question”.
3. 4
  Foxboron 3 years ago | link
  $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_DATA_HOME
  
  ~/bin
  
  ~/Documents
  
  travelreceipts
  
  papers
  
  talks
  
  ~/Notes
  
  ~/mail
  
  ~/Pictures
  
  ~/tmp
  
  ~/Git
  
  PKGBUILD
  
  devops
  
  projects
  
  sites
  
  $ProjectLanguages
  
  My structure is not very well thought out honestly. It’s just accumulated cruft because of habits. I have also spent a good amount of time cleaning up ~/ so there are only 28 files there!
  
  I also have a very ~~ugly~~ elaborate backup system which utilizes snapper and borg. I essentially just do systemctl enable backup@$snapperConfig and everything is sorted for whatever I’m deciding to snapshot+backup. It also currently sports a very specific exclude file because software is terrible, it’s not exhaustive but it covers a nice portion GB of data I do not care about.
  
  https://github.com/Foxboron/home/blob/master/.config/borg/exclude https://github.com/Foxboron/PKGBUILDS/blob/master/foxboron-system/backup-backup https://github.com/Foxboron/PKGBUILDS/blob/master/foxboron-system/snapper-home
4. 3
  gettalong 3 years ago | link
  ~/bin/ -> Some small apps like syncthing, fossil, … and a bunch of personal shell scripts
  
  ~/Desktop/ -> Don’t really need that but the OS (Linux with KDE) has it and its good for a quick and dirty place to store short lived files like TODO notes because I will see those on my desktop
  
  ~/Downloads/ -> big pile of downloaded files, cleaned out regularly (manually)
  
  ~/exthdsync/ -> This is where all the important data lives. Gets backuped with borg to a remote server and rsynced locally to a Synology RT2600ac
  
  bin/ -> scripts for managing the ~/exthdsync/ directory
  
  config/ -> This is where all the configuration files under ~/config are linked to that are important. Managed with GNU Stow. Eg. ~/config/.emacs is a symlink to ~/exthdsync/config/.emacs
  
  multimedia/ -> Multimedia files, sub-folder like music/ (managed via MusicBrainz Picard, books/ (managed via Calibre) and pictures/ (manually managed, sub-folder per year, then “YYYY-MM-DD Description” folders)
  
  personal/ -> Personal stuff
  
  appdata/ -> probably misnamed, contains subfolders for finance, housing related stuff, mails/ folder with all my mails, …
  
  repos/ -> sub-folders are Git repositories of my projects
  
  One subfolder per education institution
5. 2
  sentry 3 years ago | link
  I haven’t invested too heavily into my setup but it’s generally something like this
  
  Standard folders
  
  ~/Code [An alias, ws for workspace, takes me here instantly]
  
  ~/dotfiles [Using GNU Stow (stow) lets me symlink any folders here to their respective root locations]
  
  ~/Dropbox [Generally any notes now that I’m starting to use org mode + PDFs etc]
  
  Nothing particularly out of the ordinary besides that. I leave things like node_modules, virtualenvs and whatever in their respective folders and never try to back them up with something like Dropbox (since you mentioned blacklisting with backup software)
  
  I’m trying to make better use of search first for most everything I use but I’m not quite there with my files at all.
6. 2
  
  mankyKitty 3 years ago | link
  
  I humbly ask home-manager to sort this rats nest out for me… then I make a “repos” folder and an “experiments” folder and get on with things…
7. 2
  
  ssl 3 years ago | link
  
  ~/src for hacking, ~/stl for 3d printing, and ~/rpg for role-playing games.
8. 2
  
  aerique edited 3 years ago | link
  
  I think I’m not much different from what other people have written, although I do fight my OS about Desktop, Music, etc., except Downloads, I’ve given up on that. So Downloads remains and I have the evergreens other people have: bin, projects, etc. For wildcards I have (besides Downloads): dump.
  
  One thing I do have to offer is syncing services. I have been trying out a couple after starting with Dropbox years ago and I don’t fight them, since some are not very flexible about where they want their folder to be. Instead I have sync in my home folder which I symlink to whatever service I’m currently using. It makes it easy to switch without having to update scripts and other stuff.
9. 1
  player1537 3 years ago | link
  I’ve spent a long time finalizing my home directory. I use a variation of the FHS for all my local files, though it took a while to really appreciate and make the most out of it.
  
  Every time I reinstall my OS, I go through the same process of removing all the Documents, Pictures, Downloads, etc directories and create the ones I prefer. Most of them stay gone, but Desktop and Downloads often come back. The biggest perpetrators are Gnome and Chrome, respectively, but this is solved with a few settings that I always have to look up.
  
  ~/bin/ - for any scripts I write and use, and especially for wrapper scripts to fix things I don't like ~/mnt/ - for `sudo mount /dev/sdb ~/mnt/` ~/opt/ - for software and tools that might need compiled (like ~/opt/dwm, ~/opt/Write, ~/opt/yEd) ~/share/ - for writings or drawings that I create (like ~/share/documents/*.svg, produced by Write) ~/src/ - for any project I work on (every directory here is a git repo) ~/src/*_paper/ - for research papers I'm working on ~/src/tmp/ - for any projects that I don't intend to commit to git (like re-clones of my work projects for trying new things) ~/tmp/ - for any files I download ~/tmp/*/ - for any completely throwaway projects (e.g. ffmpeg scripts for making hour long sleep videos) ~/etc/ - for any configuration files for tools I use
  
  I want to use the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME directories but I never spend enough time making sure it all works, so I don’t really trust them to work right. I also just don’t like the idea of hiding config files in a hidden directory.
  
  One thing I used to do that I no longer do is to keep a very organized ~/src/ directory. I had a script to clone every project into an exact path and then update symlinks to be easier to use. The trouble I ran into is that it was a little too regimented and didn’t make it easy to write throwaway code because I always had to create a GitHub repository when I wanted to work on a project.
  
  ~/src/github.com/$owner/$repo - for any GitHub projects cloned ~/src/bitbucket.org/$owner/$repo - for any BitBucket projects cloned ~/src/$repo -> ~/src/github.com/$owner/$repo - symlinks for easier access to the full path
  
  I also try to have a small home directory as most of my work is on limited drives, so I need a solution to managing large datasets. The trick I use there is to make heavy use of symlinks to a data drive. For example, a project ~/src/foo would have ~/src/foo/data pointing to /mnt/mylargedrive/foo/data and ~/src/foo/gen would point to /mnt/mylargedrive/foo/gen. Then I can document the data source and formats in a /mnt/mylargedrive/foo/README and everything stays nice and clean.
10. 1
  focusaurus 3 years ago | link
  ~/.config most of my dotfiles stuff
  
  ~/archive holds one directory per year with stuff I want to keep archived but am not actively using
  
  ~/bin in my PATH. Holds custom scripts with no filename extensions
  
  ~/books PDFs of books
  
  ~/clients client work
  
  ~/music mp3s
  
  ~/screens screenshots get dropped here with timestamp and description in the filename
  
  ~/voice-memos syncs audio recordings from my phone voice memo app via syncthing
  
  assorted dotfiles I don’t control and don’t fight
  
  The important ones are included in my home dir git repo
  
  The unimportant ones are ignored from git
  
  assorted OS default directories I don’t control and don’t usually fight
  
  I do use ~/Downloads but I symlink it is ~/downloads too
  
  I don’t use the macos ones mostly ~/Photos ~/Music etc
  
  My home directory is a git repo. Details on my setup are on my github
11. 1
  cadey 3 years ago | link
  backup -> backups and stuff code -> coding projects, both mine and others doc -> documents and papers (usually life meta) desk -> desktop dumping ground dl -> download dumping ground go -> $GOPATH keybase -> keybase folders music -> the little music i do store locally prefix -> the unpackagable project -> project files (not code) tmp -> temporary dumping ground, home of unix sockets
12. 1
  spc476 3 years ago | link
  My Linux system at home:
  
  ~/JAIL - for installing libraries and programs that I don’t want system wide.
  
  ~/JAIL2 - for when stuff would conflict with stuff in JAIL
  
  ~/apps - applications that are compiled from tarballs
  
  ~/archive - said tarballs
  
  ~/bin
  
  ~/docs
  
  ~/images - used long before Pictures became a thing
  
  ~/projects - source code I’ve written
  
  ~/public_gemini
  
  ~/public_gopher
  
  ~/public_html
  
  ~/repo - applications that are downloaded from github (mostly)
  
  ~/source - source code I’ve written
  
  ~/sundaygame - notes for my D&D campaign
  
  ~/writings - stuff I’ve written
  
  nano - directories for NaNoGenMo
  
  journal - notes for my blog
  
  entries - notes about a thousand different topics
  
  There isn’t a real difference between the projects and source directories if I’m honest, but it seemed (and still does) like a good idea. For backups, I use rsync with a list of files to be excluded (stuff like *.o, *~ etc.and even certain directories). It works for me.
13. 1
  z3bra 3 years ago | link
  I don’t have much top directories:
  
  code (for cloning project sources)
  
  data (for non recreatable data and mountpoints)
  
  videos
  
  pictures
  
  isos
  
  notes
  
  onedrive (mounted via rclone)
  
  sharepoint (mounted via rclone)
  
  …
  
  tmp (mounted tmpfs)
  
  drist.d (modules for drist, a config manager)
  
  I also rely heavily on ~/.local for custom software installation (with a simple custom package manager), and ~/.cache for holding data that can be regenerated (eg. offline IMAP sync, custom port tree).
  
  As for backups, I simple use tar -c on my whole $HOME (stopping at mountpoints) and deduplicate the data using dedup in a local repo lying in /var/dedup/$HOSTNAME. This encrypted/compressed repo is sync’d remotely using rclone to my company onedrive. For my personnal backups, I am working on using backblaze to host my dedup repo. Config files of servers are backed up using tarsnap.
14. 1
  inactive-user 3 years ago | link
  ./ ../ bin@ .cshrc@ etc/ lib/ mail/ prog/ tmp/ usr/
  
  I’ve been rearranging again recently.
  
  bin is a link to lib/bin/ which holds a bunch of little scripts.
  
  .cshrc is my shell configuration file - I’d rather this wasn’t there, but can’t find a good way for it not to be (previously I had .profile here, this now has the same purpose).
  
  etc/ is for program source if I download it, git repositories and so on.
  
  lib/ is my $XDG_CONFIG_HOME - I like it visible and chose lib because that’s what Plan 9 did.
  
  mail/ holds some mbox files, and a directory of queued messages. I keep meaning to move it into usr/ as currently I copy both mail and usr to a USB when reinstalling an OS or switching computers.
  
  prog/ is a joint $XDG_CACHE_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME, as I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with either being removed.
  
  tmp/ is my download directory, and also set as desktop, but I don’t use a window manager that has icons so I don’t get to see that.
  
  usr/ is stuff about me. There’s a subdirectory projects/ which holds individual projects, programming or otherwise. I don’t sort by language subdirectories as I never found that particularly helpful. A subdirectory texts/ holds pdfs, epubs, textfiles and the like tentatively sorted according to the Dewey system. A school directory holds essays and old notes - now I mostly take notes entirely off-computer. The music/ and pictures/ directories are also here.
15. 1
  marcecoll 3 years ago | link
  Here’s what tree -dL 1 looks like at $HOME
  
  . ├── downloads ├── bin // local bin folder ├── books // pdfs, ebooks, docs ├── build // Build folder for external projects ├── docs // Documents ├── music ├── org // personal org files ├── proj // personal code projects
  
  It’s actually a lot less clean than this, but this is what it’s supposed to look like (plus $WORK folder which I keep separate from proj)
16. 1
  
  stephenr 3 years ago | link
  
  I have my dot files synced via iCloud Drive, including a script I wrote to re-populate symlinks on a new machine, and convert newly created dot files (e.g. for a new tool I start using) by moving + symlinking.
  
  The above tool also sets up a hidden ~/bin symlink which also goes back to a dir in the iCloud based dot files dir, for small utility shell scripts (i.e. the dot file script itself, a script to connect/disconnect an SSH socks proxy and set the appropriate system pref so the proxy is used, etc)
  
  Besides that, my home folder is mostly just “as intended” - photos, documents etc.
  
  Project work (i.e. mostly code, but some documentation etc as well) I have on an external M2 SSD. I can thus unplug it, move to my laptop (or a new Mac), plug it in and my work is all there. Combined with the iCloud sync’d dot files, it makes setting up a new machine (either new hardware, or after a clean OS install) quite simple - install apps, run a script, plug in the SSD.
17. 1
  charlotte edited 3 years ago | link
  As an unemployed student:
  
  .config/
  
  .cache/
  
  .dotfiles/
  
  .git/
  
  [various packages managed by GNU stow]
  
  Documents/
  
  Backups/
  
  yyyy-mm-dd-description.tar.zst.age
  
  Development/
  
  Hardware/
  
  Projects/ # Large scale, multi-subproject “Projects”
  
  Miscellaneous/
  
  Web/
  
  Music/
  
  Screenshots/
  
  yyyy/
  
  mm/
  
  dd/
  
  hh-mm-ss(-n).png
  
  Videos/
  
  Projects/
  
  Recordings/
  
  Movies/
  
  Subtitles/
  
  Backups are manual: I copy the target folder, throw it in a tar, compress the tarball with zstandard, and encrypt it with a passphrase using age. It wouldn’t be hard to throw this workflow into cron though.
18. 1
  rustybolt 3 years ago | link
  Besides the ‘normal’ folders (Desktop, Documents, Pictures), I have:
  
  ~/bin
  
  ~/work
  
  ~/temp
  
  ~/repos
  
  And I put stuff in ~, ~/temp, ~/Desktop. Additionally, I have a external harddrive laying around with a projects folder where I have a lot of stuff. I also have various folders named ‘documents’, ‘BACKUP’, ‘old’, ‘old phone’ and ‘to sort’ on external harddrives or USB sticks. Then I have things on various accounts on google drive and dropbox, and some posts I’m working on on stackedit.io. It’s a mess, really.
19. 1
  
  noqqe 3 years ago | link
  
  The $HOME dir layout I prefer (not my blog): https://morr.cc/home-sweet-home/
20. 1
  ptman 3 years ago | link
  .config/ # $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, most config files, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDG_Base_Directory for tips
  
  annex/ # git-annex
  
  bin/ # in $PATH
  
  doc/ # most stuff that isn’t in src/
  
  Mail/ # offlineimap syncs mail here
  
  old/ # backups from old installation, chipping away at it one bit at a time
  
  pkg/ # GOPATH=$HOME
  
  src/ # not just go projects, but GOPATH=$HOME
  
  sshfs/ # afuse can automount stuff here
  
  tmp/ # temporary files
  
  var/ # not quite so temporary files
  
  .session.d/ # xsession snippets, should move to ~/.config
  
  .git/ # I have $HOME in a git repository, and lots of stuff in ~/.gitignore
  
  .local/bin # is in $PATH also
21. 1
  hazel edited 3 years ago | link
  bin/ => scripts
  
  etc/ => dotfiles, symlinks managed with https://git.qtp2t.club/hazel/lake [wip]
  
  src/ => code that is mine or isn’t mine but i work with often
  
  tmp/ => downloads
  
  usr/doc/ => documents
  
  usr/games/ => take a wild guess
  
  usr/img/ => self-explanatory
  
  usr/music/ => still self-explanatory
  
  usr/video/ => yeah
  
  var/build/ => stuff that isn’t my code but i need to compile
  
  var/certs/ => certificates
  
  var/mail/ => maildir, managed by mbsync
  
  var/packages/ => clone of https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages, on a cronjob to fetch every day
  
  var/queue/ => nq: https://github.com/leahneukirchen/nq
  
  var/rtorrent/ => yeah
  
  var/service/ => runit service files: alias svu=“SVDIR=~/var/service sv”
  
  var/vbox/ => yeah
  
  wpilib/ => hardcoded non-XDG non-dotfile path for a Java library
  
  …and a LOT of dotfile pollution in ls -a, but I don’t really care
22. 1
  dmytrish edited 3 years ago | link
  bin - a place to put scripts and dump .iso files and some installations like IntelliJ. Maybe it should be a symlink to .local/bin.
  
  code - contains my projects at the top level, also:
  
  code/go - my $GOPATH
  
  code/src - cloned git repositories, mostly from github, roughly organized by topic (lang, os, sys, util, etc)
  
  downloads as a messy dumping ground for files from the internet
  
  Sync for the Syncthing directory
  
  the usual stuff: desktop, docs, music, pics, video (yes, I edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to get the shorter lower-case names)
  
  oh, I’ve just noticed snap in my home directory.
  
  a bunch of hidden directories, some of them more interesting than others: .local, .config, .cabal, .cargo, .hoogle, .rustup, .sbt, .stack, .VirtualBox and others.