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  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    But what’s the difference? It’ll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Better organization and backup / restore. For example if you want to restore config files but don’t want to move over the large “.local” folder, applications that write to $HOME will create diifculty.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Because, like /etc, you know there is a designated place for config files. It’s already set for you right there, and there is a standard for it.

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        /etc can’t be edited on immutable distros and usually apps store the editable config in /home/config and make the /etc one kind of read-only.

        • bsergay@discuss.online
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          4 months ago

          /etc can’t be edited on immutable distros

          False on at least Fedora Atomic[1], NixOS[2] and openSUSE Aeon[3]

          Which ‘immutable’ distros are you referring to?


          1. On Fedora Atomic, changing /etc is literally identical to how it goes any other distro; or at least 1-to-1 as on traditional Fedora. The bonus is that a pristine copy of the original /etc is kept inside a sub-directory of /usr. Furthermore, all changes compared to the pristine copy are kept track of.
          2. On NixOS, changes have to be applied through configuration.nix. Though, regardless, it’s effectively possible to edit and populate /etc like it is on other distros.
          3. It’s explicitly mentioned that /etc does not belong to the immutable base.
          • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            Fedora Atomic allowed it recently afaik. I’m always forgetting this. And NixOS is not immutable because of R/W FS.

            • bsergay@discuss.online
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              4 months ago

              No sorry, Fedora Atomic has allowed changes to /etc since at least 2019. Regarding NixOS, the consensus is that it’s an immutable distro. The immutability of /nix/store/ suffices for this.

              Your notion on Fedora Atomic was false. So, what other ‘immutable’ distro did you have in mind when making that comment?

                • bsergay@discuss.online
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                  4 months ago

                  Thank you for your honesty! I only intend for the truth to prevail and/or to reach mutual understanding. So please don’t feel attacked. If somehow I came off as such, my apologies; that has never been my intent.

    • SmokeInFog@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      But what’s the difference?

      I can only imagine someone asking this if they a) don’t use the terminal except if Stackexchange says they should and b) have yet to try and cleanup a system that’s acquired cruft over a few years. If you don’t care about it, then let me flip that around and ask why you care if people use XDG? The people who care about it are the people in the spaces that concern it.

      Off the top of my head this matters because:

      • it’s less clutter, especially if you’re browsing your system from terminal
      • it’s a single, specified place for user specific configs, session cache, application assets, etc. Why wouldn’t such important foundational things required for running apps not be in a well defined specification? Why just dump it gracelessly in the user’s root folder outside of pure sloppy laziness?
      • it makes uninstalling apps easier
      • it makes maintenance easier
      • it makes installing on new machines easier

      It’ll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.

      🙄

        • SmokeInFog@midwest.social
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          4 months ago

          It’s weird to me that you think I think that. I do primarily browse files by terminal, but not always. Before I got into heavy terminal use I was a power user of Nemo. In any case, dumping everything in /home does not make for a better gui file browsing experience, either

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            The implication seemed to be “if you don’t care exactly where all your files are you must not use terminal”. Which I still don’t get. Just about anyone who would even be in a community like this uses terminal a lot anyway.