How To Manage Your Home Directory?

gustgr writes "There are times I got surprised after running ls in my $HOME directory. It is filled with trash, test files, directories that were supposed to be only temporary, ascii files with quick notes and all sort of stuff. In other words, it is a complete mess. Then I remove the trash, clean up the directories, run the mv command a few times and everything looks good and normal again. Two weeks later the disorder is back and I have to handle it again. How do you manage your home directory in order to keep it clean? Are your homes a mess too?" I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work," and subfolders within these that are at least mostly consistent between computers / drives; every day or so I sweep loose files into these, then open each folder, sort, repeat. How do you sort your data?

Comments

a tmp filder and a storage folder.

[tolan-b]

Personally I have a ~/tmp and a ~/storage

Anything that I don't need to keep goes in tmp. For example, downloaded RPMs that I just want to install, links to movie clips that freinds send me, most downloads (I move them elsewhere afterwards if I want to keep them), experimental compiles (moving the dir somewhere else if I keep it installed and want to keep the installer for cleaning it up later).

~/storage/ contains anything I want to keep. That includes project files, music, backups and so on.

If I need to make space then ~/tmp gets a scrubbing, if I want to back up or move to a new machine then it's a simple case of copying ~/storage and any ~/.foo config stuff to the new box (or backup in case of a system re-install).

if u have to live in the shit you make...

[fozzmeister]

... you don't, for that reason i have my home directory as my desktop directory, so if my home is ugly, so is my desktop. it hardly ever is (or at worst my desktop is a list of to-do's

how I does it:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an XP Pro+sfu system for my main workstation, some of this might make a litte more sense in that context.
I split my drive into three partitions;

c:\ is for system stuff and the temp folder. I redirected all temp folder locations to c:\temp, including all the windows temp files, user profile temp folders, browser caches, etc. makes it easy to clean up and simple to retrieve stuff

d:\ became 'Documents', redirected for all user profiles concept of 'My Documents', by registry hacks and system policy changes (makes new user defaults to here) that is broken up into folders named 'audio' 'images' 'documents' 'music' 'projects' 'online' 'sort' and a few others. This makes cli management of files extra easy to deal with. I use the root of each of these folders as an 'incoming' space for files of that type, with sub folders for longer term post sorting storage.

e:\ became 'Programs', broken down into categories like 'av' 'dev' 'games' 'graphics' and 'net' with the root of the drive as the default program location for installers using that system variable. speeds up installing things tremendously, as I just need to add the relavent subcategory in place of the default that a wizard gives me usually 'c:\program files\(blah)' or 'e:\(blah)'.

f:\ is another larger older and slower drive, on the second ide bus, called 'freezer', where I store zips, ISOs and the like. I also have a folder there called 'Bad Music' , where I store music that's shown up but isn't going to get listened too. For some reason, i can't delete crap music, but I don't want it showing up in my music players' lists (think "transformed man - william shatner" and anything by "styx", crap like that).

last but not least, i keep a folder on the desktop called 'drawer' where I can dump accumulated files rapidly and sort them later. I usually put half of those in the trash. for little scraps and notes, I dump them all into one big file named '(sort date) - notes.txt' from the command line, using the command "d:\desktop\drawer\type *.txt >> notes.txt" and file that away. just have to remember to put titles and carriage returns in my notes. between windows search and google desktop search, i have no trouble bringing that stuff up quickly when I eventually need it.

the google way

[iamcadaver]

put it all in ~/public_html, and find stuff with google site://my_host/~myname

Sooner or later, google will be right, you won't be able to keep up with all the accumulated crap that TiB hard drives and uber-pipe broadband and "smart" agents and tivo-like p2p this crap was downloaded because it's like the other crap you've searched for

And we will love it.

To quote google

[tod_miller]

Don't sort - search.

I disagree with them on this, although when my desktop or documents folder (yeah yeah, I have 'net at work only right now) get full I sweep them into a 'sort_this_junk_out' folder, then that gets swept into the next, then I burn a CD backup of my documents, and a year later find endless levels of forgotten detritus.

I say, do what the photographers do. Sort by as much as you need.

Work, Home, Play

Play -
Video
Music
Funny
Pr0n

Etc etc. Then have a download folder, and a sep install folder. Anything you want to keep move it to install or to work/home/play.

Then setup a chron job to rm -rf ~/download/* every 48 hours.

This forces you to buck up your ideas, and auto wipes shizzle you don't want. the chron could:

rm -rf ~/furnace/*
mv ~/download/* ~/furnace/*

Which would give you a 92 hours period to save files.

Just my arbitarily small denomination of the currency of your choice.