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

simple really

[Prowl]

Anything I want to get rid of, I put in the /bin. Stuff I can't really categorise I put in /etc, and all the stuff I use goes in /usr.

Re:simple really

[slaker]

I seriously had a client doing that. She didn't know how to make directories so she drug things into the recycle bin so she knew where to find them.

And - seriously - came to me complaining that she was losing files. I was thinking bad hard disk or virus or... well, not that.

mkdir subdirectory

[SpaceLifeForm]

Always make a directory and put the files you are dealing with in it immediately. Don't wait.

Re:mkdir subdirectory

[Short Circuit]

I wrote a shell script that automatically handles files found on key fobs or other portable storage.

It checks /mnt/$DEVICE for three directories: bin, track and transport. It makes a backup of the bin directory, performs rudimentary version checking(md5sum) and snapshot backup on files in the track directory, and copies files from the transport directory to a timestamped directory under $HOME/transfer/transport.

In my spare time, I'm improving it. It's currently a combination of three or four scripts, but it should be down to a single script by Monday. Anyone who wants a copy, email me. :)

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).

My organisation

[shufler]

This is easy. Pornographic movies go in the /vids directory, while pornographic images go in the /pics directory.

My home directory

[Yenya]

My home directory varies on different hosts, but I usually have the ~/tmp subdir for all the thrash (untarred packages of software, temporary scripts, etc). Then there is ~/public_html with my home page, and ~/bin (added to my $PATH) with various scripts and locally installed programs. On most hosts I also have ~/tex, ~/txt, ~/audio and ~/video subdirs as well. My primary mail host has ~/Mail with inboxes subdir. That's all (and bits of random crap here and there).

Out of sight...

[Scarblac]

Simply give all your files names starting with '.'.

Here's how to do it..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my way.. I stick everything on the desktop, then when desktop is full I make a folder called stuff and move everything into it. rinse, repeat if you get too many folders called stuff2 stuff3 stuff50 whatever, just make a new folder and put all the other folders inside it :)

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.

Home dir solution

[44BSD]

cd; find . -atime gt 30 -print | xargs rm -f

Best when modified and run as root over luser dirs, of course. Quotas are for sissies.

My layout

[debaere]

My home directory ussually looks like the following:

~/download - for all downloaded files. If I am downloading many related files I put them in appropriately named sub dirs
~/library - for any documentation downloaded from the net, and a copy of my O'Reilly CD Bookshelves
~/temp - for a temp directory
~/test - for temp files from tarballs and installations
~/bin - for locally installed apps
~/work - for a temporary work space when working on projects
~/devel - all personal programming projects
~/locker - any other files I wish to keep
~/Document - any office or other personal documentation.

The only files I purposely keep in the root of my home directory (aside from the dot-files) is a running todo list of notes and tasks, all of which is contained in one file.

Re:My layout

[Just Some Guy]

Don't forget ~/sourcecode for pr0n - the wife will never think to look there.

Re:My layout

[msim]

nono!! that's ~/caseydonovan/ Sheesh!!!

Re:My layout

[Leroy_Brown242]

I'd be impressed if my girlfriend managed to figure out a unix machine enough to browse directories. :)

Re:My layout

[Goo.cc]

One time, my wife wanted to browse the web on my computer so that she wouldn't have to boot up her Windows computer. I fired up Lynx for her and I was never asked again (I'm guess that the Big Brother website is not Lynx friendly).

Re:My layout

[the_womble]

I assuming you are using Lynx or some kind of Unix,

so your wife now presumeably tells people how terrible this Linux is, and that it does not even have a "proper internet" - or something on those lines.

The community thanks your for your contribution to Linux advocacy.

Check early, check often

[ctr2sprt]

The only real way to handle it is to get in the habit of checking your home directory for cruft on a regular basis. Do what you can to save longer-term things directly to where they will be saved, but that will only mitigate the problem. If you can't remember to check, write a cron job which emails you if your home directory gets more than a certain number of files. Something very simple like:

0 0 * * * if [ `ls -d $HOME/* | wc -l` -gt 20]; then echo 'Too much stuff!'; fi

One problem which I have is the creation of temporary directories for archives. Most tar files, as you know, extract to a directory. So if I get package-1.2.3.tar.gz, I also usually have a package-1.2.3 directory lying around. Even if I want to save the original .tar.gz file it's pointless to have the directory there too. You might want to write a script which looks for those stale directories. Don't run it automatically, of course: just keep it in ~/bin or someplace so you can run it as step 1 of the cleanup process.

Something like this might work:

#!/bin/sh

find "$1" -type f -name '*.tar.gz' | (
while read tarfile; do
basedir=`dirname "$tarfile"`
tarbasedir=`tar tzf "$tarfile" | head -1`
tardir="$basedir/$tarbasedir"
if [ -d "$tardir" ]; then
spaceused=`du -s $tardir | cut -f1`
echo "$spaceused $tardir $tarfile"
fi
done
)

Then you run it as follows:

% ./sm .
3201 ./psybnc/ ./psyBNC2.3.1.tar.gz
904320 ./download/BitTorrent-3.4.2/ ./download/BitTorrent-3.4.2.tar.gz
14742 ./download/eggdrop1.6.16/ ./download/eggdrop1.6.16.tar.gz
130583&nbsp ; ./download/mysql-4.1.3-beta/ ./download/mysql-4.1.3-beta.tar.gz
29350 ./BitchX/ ./ircii-pana-1.1-final.tar.gz

The output is in three fields: space used by the directory, the directory name, and the tar.gz file where we found the original. You can be asked to delete anything it finds with:

% ./sm . | awk '{print $2}' | xargs rm -i

If you want to be a little safer you can just delete the original .tar.gz files. Substitute $3 in the awk expression in that case. And finally, again using awk, you can delete only directories which use up more than a certain amount of space with something like '{if($1 > 5000) print $2}'.

You can also whip something up using find to look for files which haven't been accessed in more than a certain number of days. Reading a file updates its atime, so that's a pretty secure way to find stale temporary files.

% find ~ -type f -atime +60

For real zaniness, add xargs basename, sort, uniq -c, and sort -n. That'll get you a breakdown of how many applicable files found in each directory and sort it for you.

Ain't Unix awesome?

Right now?

[dasunt]

First, file systems have supported a hierachy for awhile now -- use it !

Second, sort as soon as you get the file.

Third, seperate public files (things you won't mind sharing across the local network) from private files.

Fourth, (a tip for windows users) keep a "zipped_programs" or similar directory. Build a hierarchy inside of it for task, program name, then version. It may look like such:

/data/public/zipped_programs/internet/firefox/1.0/
/data/public/zipped_programs/drivers/widget_9000/w in2k/v1.13/widget_9000_v1.13_2k.zip

If I have a CD of software I've installed, I tend to rip it and keep it in its own directory, along with the serial/key in a seperate file. Then put the CD in a binder and store it somewhere safe. If you download a no-cd crack, store it as well. Congrats, you just made your life a lot easier.

/data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/iso/di ablo_2.iso
/data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/serial /diablo_2_serial.txt /data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/cracks /no_cd.zip

Finally, manage your home directory as well. Seperate folders for seperate tasks. Include a ~/tmp/ directory, its useful.

That is my system, across windows and linux, developed by me. It works well, and it makes any windows installs go quickly. In addition, since I'm on a dialup link, its nice to have a program archive for installing updates onto all machines on the local lan.

I only have one complaint with the system, and its for linux -- I would prefer to have a method of keeping track of any changed configuration files, including versioning.

Of course, there are many possible solutions to this problem. I'm leaning towards having a /custom directory, with a symlink of any file I've changed, and a script to check it all into RCS if there are any changes. So, for example, /custom/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 would be a symlink to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and the RCS file would be saved under /custom/etc/X11/.RCS/XF86Config-4,v

I pretend that my home directory is plan9

[soybean]

I just use:

alias l='ls -lrt | tail -24'

and then I only look at recent files, and I let the cruft run free. Additionally, I capitalize any long-living directory.

Then I just tar up any files that are not capitalized direcories that are more then say 4 months old. I keep the lists of files keept in each backup (dvdr) in a Directory.

I also just periodically, run a:

du -sk * | sort -n

and just blow away any big files or directories that are not important to me.

Pedantic.

[fuzzybunny]

- ~/bin -- my own executables and scripts
- ~/tmp -- gets nuked every time I log out
- ~/public_html -- obvious
- ~/Graphics -- pics 'n crap
- ~/Funny -- obvious
- ~/Mail -- imap folders
- ~/Work -- anything work-related
- ~/Docs -- well, docs
- ~/Tunes -- mp3s and the likes
- ~/Misc -- depending on the account

I try to keep the "standard" folders and those containing my personal junk separated by capitalizing the first letter of the ones I tend to dump stuff into manually. I know it's utterly anal, but it's worked for me for > 13 years.

Another schema

[kenthorvath]

I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work,"

That's funny, I was thinking of suggesting 'animal', 'vegetable', 'mineral', etc...

Or perhaps using the 'Kingdom', 'Phylum', 'Class', etc... schema.

Re:Another schema

[SkunkPussy]

> >I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work,"

> That's funny, I was thinking of suggesting 'animal', 'vegetable', 'mineral', etc...

> Or perhaps using the 'Kingdom', 'Phylum', 'Class', etc... schema."

Personally I have 14 folders in my home directory, corresponding to the 14 different file classifications:

ThoseThatBelongToTheEmperor

EmbalmedOnes

ThoseThatAreTrained

SucklingPigs

Mermaids

FabulousOnes

StrayDogs

ThoseThatAreIncludedInThisClassification

ThoseThatTrembleAsIfTheyWereMad

InnumerableOnes

ThoseDrawnWithAVeryFineCamel'sHairBrush

Others

ThoseThatHaveJustBrokenAFlowerVase

ThoseThatResembleFliesFromADistance

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.

For now, I'm letting it go to hell

[Dixie_Flatline]

For the moment, I'm just letting everything go to pot. I just throw things in whatever directory is convenient, and hope that I remember where I put it later. I'm really looking forward to Spotlight on OS X.

Personally, I think that in a few years time, heirarchical filesystems will be on their way out. With the current state of computing, there's little reason to have such a system when you can have a filesystem that does all the work for you. I've heard that the same functionality will be coming to Linux through ReiserFS (though I admit to not following that very closely since I'm obviously an OS X user).

So, that probably doesn't help you much, but then again, it might. Just look around for a system that allows fast indexed searching of your machine so you don't have to keep track of this crap yourself.

(Incidentally, it isn't only you. In one of the ACM's recent quarterly journals on Human-Computer Interaction, it found that most users are unable to keep track of where their files are because there are just too many of them. Also, it found that the search facilities currently in place in Windows and Mac (OS 9?) systems are entirely inadequate for the task.)

Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell

[menscher]

One of my users is apparently following your strategy: his home directory currently contains 2160 files. I've learned not to just type "ls" in that directory, since the sorting (alphabetical order) takes too long. He's also learned that the only way to find a file is to sort by date (ls -ltr). Since he usually remembers if he last modified a file today or a month ago, it doesn't take too long to locate it. Especially if you remember part of the name.

My strategy? I've got folders like: Computer, Research, Personal, Crypt (for cryptography, not encrypted files), and tmp. In the end, I've got "only" 152 files in my homedir. Of course, I've also got massive confusion about whether something goes under Computer or Crypt....

Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell

[hackstraw]

Me too. I just thow crap in my home directories until 'ls' simply outputs too much stuff, and then I clean up.

My personal machine is a mac as well, and my safari download location is my home directory. I actually like my home directory messy :) It makes a quick 'scp' easier because I don't have to type or remember the path either on the 'to' or 'from' machine. I always know where my current files are. Simply typing 'ls' is pretty much always useless. 'ls -lotr' is usually better. WIldcards really help.

I consider stuff in my home directory as kinda temporary and/or immediate files. Meaning that I could be using them for the next couple of months or so. I find it too easy to use wildcards and to sort by time to waste my time cleaning up stuff. If someone mentions a PDF that they sent me last week I do ls -lotr *.pdf Odds are its near the bottom somewhere with a filename that makes sense.

Now if something is important enough that I want to keep it semi-indefinitely, I put it somewhere where I can find it later, most likely on 2 different computers, and often one of them gets backed up.

I thought of writing a cronjob to go and touch all of the file in my home directory that do not begin with '.' and are not directories and have a timestamp of older than 24 hours, and automatically moving junk to some directory after 14 days or so, but I havn't done that yet.

I guess my point is that 1) besides my '.' files, I consier all files in $HOME to be basically temporary. Most of them are downloads which are located in safari's download manager for some time, and are also easily reobtainable. I don't mind the mess because filtering, grepping, sorting makes finding something trivial. Once things get "out of hand", I clean up. Sometimes I just move bunches of junk to a new dirctory called 'stuff' or something, and after its been in stuff long enough and I havn't needed any files from there, I just toss stuff. 2) I put important files in logical places where I know important files go. And, I always have at least one form of redundancy.

Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell

[jc42]

For the moment, I'm just letting everything go to pot. I just throw things in whatever directory is convenient, and hope that I remember where I put it later. ... I'm obviously an OS X user

Heh. A year ago, I would have replied by commenting on how easy it is on linux (or any earlier unixoid system) to create directories and tell all apps to store their output files in the appropriate places. Then I got a PowerBook. The file system is chaos. Nearly every app has its own scheme for where to store files. Most don't ask; they just store things away in a directory and with a filename that is never displayed. Some do pop up a "Save" window. Some of those only allow a save/don't choice. Some let me type in a file name but not the directory (and most of those strip off any directory that I include ;-). A very few let me choose the directory and the file name.

Periodically, I look around in a Terminal window, and try to figure out what the hell all those multi-MB files are, and which I can delete. Many of them have gibberish names. Some of those I can identify by examining their contents; others are pure mysteries that I move into a "tmp" subdirectory with the hope that whatever needs it will complain and give me enough of a clue to restore the file. A few apps have broken, presumably because I moved a file that they want but I couldn't identify.

Quite a lot of the files have clues in their names, and often they are sitting in really bizarre places. Some of my source directories for projects are littered with files from Mac apps, or files that I can't identify.

It sure looks like Apple is consciously working on destroying the usefulness (and simplicity) of a neirarchical file system, so we'll have to use a search mechanism to find files. This does tend to throw a monkey wrench into attempts to build my own packages (or port others') into directories. Strange, unrelated files appear in a package that have nothing to do with it. This goes a long way toward discouraging the use of OS X for the development of commercial packages.

Well, it's been an interesting experience ... I do worry about what I'll do when the disk gets filled with files that I can't identify. I give it two years.

I'd agree that the Windows and Mac tools for searching are inadequate. I'd add linux to that list, but add that it's not much of a problem there, since my own directories don't seem to get violated by the installed apps.

In any case, I keep finding that some combination of "find" and "grep" does a better job than any fancier tool that I've yet come across. It can take a while, though.

My $HOME

[JabberWokky]

I have the following:

bin - contains a set of script files that do personal things, plus a handful of binaries.

doc - contains documents that I've created. Broken down quite carefully:
doc/coding - personal projects
doc/fandom - various groups and activities I do
doc/karma - a large software project I work on
doc/life - real world things: maps and notes about camp sites and dating ideas, family things
doc/photo - photos I have taken organized by date (doc/photo/year/month/day)
doc/photo/found - photos of friends I have found
doc/projects - various projects I work on, the cast I direct, etc.
doc/songs - songs I have written and notes on covers I perform
doc/system - notes on hardware, software and my network
doc/text - essays, stories, etc. that I have written
doc/work - memos and invoices (actual work files are below

ks - my primary work project, a large source tree

pub - data files I've downloaded or ripped/encoded.
pub/games - roms for emulators
pub/image - very organized images from all over the place, from 10th century tapestries to scans of Manning's fetish lineart.
pub/music - organized by genre
pub/text - ebooks (first level is erotica, fiction, nonfiction, reference, rpg and scripts).
pub/video - very very organized and quite deep. I've been encoding my extensive DVDs and VHS collection for quite awhile now.

usr - contains system settings, in $HOME so I can sync (more info later)
usr/etc/cron - network wide cronfiles, these sync everything and are symlinked.
usr/etc/dot - all my dot files ($HOME/.*). rc files and config directories. I sync my settings and back them up.
usr/etc/fileindex - index of pub (since pub doesn't exist on my laptop when I'm not NFSed to it).
usr/etc - also contains hosts and ssh info.
usr/install - tarballs and rpms to install everything the way I like it.
usr/log - chat logs and the like
usr/palm - my palm apps and backup/sync directories. I can drop text files in here and they appear as ebooks on my palm. Go KPilot!
usr/share - contains various media and configuration files. Top level under this are ( desktop fonts icons kde kde.betty kde.riffraff ksubtle menu.betty music people sound wallpaper ). The kde.hostname directories are my configs for my laptop and desktop, and $HOME/.kde/share symlinks to them. Thus my kde config is backed up and synced. music here are startup/shutdown and alert music. people are face shots of individuals for use in PIM apps. icons is a personal set of icons.

work - contains a directory for each client.

www - contains a mirror for each of the sites I maintain (my personal ones - the professional ones are way too big).

In addition to the above, I have a directory named pool on my laptop - that's media files (a few movies, tv shows, some talk radio programs) that I know I can delete without worry since they are in pub on the home file server. Stuff to watch when I'm waiting or bored.

I also have a tmp, which on my laptop NFS mounts to tmp on my home server. It contains inbound and unsorted items. I get about four gigs, burn, index the disc and then move them into pub. I can recreate pub with my spindles and index.

Finally I have a $HOME/betty on my laptop. My laptop's name is betty, and it contains anything that I downloaded directly to the laptop and I want to keep... sort of the opposite of $HOME/pool. Things here go to $HOME/tmp, and then go through the "burn/index/move to pub" cycle.

As a result, I can find any file I want in nearly a terabyte of data that goes back 25 years, some of it Apple ][ files BBS logs. I am not done indexing my offline media - I need to get a high quality turntable for some virgin vinyl that has content that has never been released on CD. Plus some VHS tapes that have never been (and is unlikely to be) released on DVD. I also have a small collection of 16mm and 35mm trailers for various odd and cult films.

For awhile I ou

Nobody has mentioned...

[wolf31o2]

It seems that nobody has mentioned the simplest way to keep your home directory neat and orderly... Don't make a mess. It really is much simpler to think about what you're doing before you do it rather than after the fact. Start put with a list of directories that you know that you will use.

Personally, I have a downloads, documents, gentoo, pictures, scripts, and work.

Story time

[illuminatedwax]

This is about a professor of mine from the University of Chicago who is a head honcho at Argonne Labs. Apparently, he's had a reputation for some years of having the most disgusting ~home directory. They eventually made a game about it: what they used to do was somebody would type 'ls' and someone else would get on a bike. Then they'd hit enter and they'd try to do laps around the server room until the ls stopped. I think their record was something around 14.

--Stephen

Make it read-only

[Chemisor]

The best thing I've done to my home directory is to make it read-only. This way I can prevent all those unnecessary configuration files that nearly every program wants to write, even if it really has no configuration data that's different from the default (what's up with that, developers?) And, of course, if I am ever dumb enough to try to write something at the root level, I get a polite reminder.

I have ...

[daveewart]

I have:

• ~/bin - binaries and scripts for my own use;
• ~/cfg - various config files, such as for kernels and Eterm;
• ~/docs - documentation;
• ~/iso - disk images;
• ~/kernel - kernel build trees;
• ~/music - oggs;
• ~/procmail - I have a bit procmail configuration, all the files sit here. This should probably be ~/.procmail;
• ~/progs - programs and scripts I'm writing;
• ~/public_html - my local web stuff;
• ~/src - program build trees;
• ~/tex - LaTeX stuff;
• ~/tmp - temporary files, cleaned out automatically every 30 days;
• ~/misc - other stuff not neatly fitting into any of the above, but to keep them out of ~;

Don't make little files!

[erikharrison]

The real trick is to USE APPLICATIONS! Don't keep notes in temp files, or little files with peoples phone numbers. Use a sticky note app, use a contact app. You'll find that they not only keep your home directory clean, but these developers have thought of all the things you can do with that info, and made most of it pretty easy.

Really, I kept all my numbers in a file, yadda yadda yadda. "I don't need no stinking calendar app". But once I used it, I realized that, in fact, I did. Try it

Re:Don't make little files!

[angst_ridden_hipster]

But make sure the applications you use have good standards for import/export, or are open source with comprehensible code in a language for which you have some hope of proficiency.

Otherwise, when the application programmer goes away, or the company goes out of business, you can be stranded with your data in a lot of obscure (probably binary) formats that are now useless. Of course, you only discover this kind of thing after an OS upgrade or something that breaks the old application...

Cron jobs

[wild_berry]

I do that too. Neat idea.

I've also got cron jobs to rm -rf /bin/*.* every thirty minutes.

like...iTunes!!

[nege]

I struggle along with my file organization...I try to keep everything in several main folders (Music, Movies, Pictures, Code, Documents), but invariably it requires maintenance and diligence on my part to adhere to my storage policies.

I think that an iTunes-like interface for your whole hard drive would be highly beneficial to manage the myriad files people have these days with those 200GB HDDs.

What I am thinking about is an interface like iTunes. Back in the windows days, I would organize my mp3s like any other files - you keep separate folders for genres (or artists, or however you wanted to sort it) all under an mp3 directory. Then you use that structure to create playlists in your fav mp3 playing software.

Fast forward to the days of iTunes - I hardly know where my mp3 files are located - I have a huge library list which is full of metadata that helps me to locate individual songs, or songs of a certain type or genre. The iTunes software takes care of storing them on the hard drive and organizing them in a way that is meaningful to itself. I have way more power and flexibility in creating my playlists since I can do smart searches through the db list of songs.

Of course, the major drawback here is you have to now keep up with metadata. While I think some clever means of doing this can be conceived (when you purchase a song from the iTunes store, it comes with meta-data already attached), some work will always be put on the user if you expect to have some customized results.

What I Have != What I'd Like

[4of12]

So I have a few directories like ~/bin , ~/msc , ~/tmp and ~/project_abbrev .

What I'd like though is multiple views of my data, like VFolders in Evolution, where an entirely different organizational structure could be applied to an entire directory tree.

That way, if one view has names associated with the underlying file formats ~/pdf , ~/jpeg , ~/ppt , etc. then, another view might have ~/today , ~/yesterday , ~/mold_covered .

Frequently, I'll have one application that I use for multiple projects. Sometimes, it's really convenient to have multiple project files for the single application all in the same place (because it's easier not to rebuild Rome from scratch).

Some of these files could be huge. And while I know about symbolic links, those have to be created by hand.

And, yes, even in the Google sense, having some organizational structure with Score by match and Score by Most Recent grep 'Video Card Perf' would also be nice.

meta information in filenames

[digitalsushi]

I'm writing this as the clueful user, neither the newbie nor the guru.

I have always had an issue with the few attributes that can be assigned to a file with a linux system. I won't bother going into my file heirarchy like everyone else has because it is very similiar. I will say that I have a 'www' folder that is available on the web. This is most frustrating!!! Why should I have to maintain a seperate tree for stuff I want online? What happens when I have yet another division I want? Files that are also on the samba network, or, files that are pornographic? Files that are recipes I want shared on Kazaa? each one splits it up more, and provides a need for duplicate files in multiple locations.

horrible!

i want to set meta information about the file. I want to

chmod +web portman.jpg

in my home directory and have it show up as a available on my website!

I once thought I could implement this in the filenames. Each attribute could be unique and part of the filename.

mv portman.jpg portman.web.jpg

mv portman.web.jpg portman.samba.recipes.web.jpg

et cetera. i never did it. maybe cause its dumb. i there was something that can do what i want to do.

Re:recompile everything by hand

[Lord Bitman]

oh, yes, tradition is definatly the most tried and tested excuse for doing something which makes no sense at all.

I use linux to avoid stupid things like "Desktop Folders". Isnt this article supposed to be about /eliminating/ clutter?

As for those who modded my other post "Troll", you know you actually CAN re-compile everything by hand, and if you do this kind of thing because of tradition you really should just fucking die already, no troll about it.

CVS

[macdaddy]

I once read an article about a guy who put his entire home directory in CVS. This strikes me as a possible solution to clutter. Need a directory to work on a bunch of test images? Create a new CVS module and stuff the files in that. I like the idea although I'm not good enough with CVS to pull something like that off. I'd like to try it someday though. Does anyone have any links to articles, HOWTOs, guides, etc on using CVS or RCS to keep files and directories organized?

Flat and Alphabetical

[chrisatslashdot]

I used to try to store everything in deep heiarchies with complex organizations, both electronic and paper files. After reading David Cole's 'Getting Things Done' I reorganized everything into a very flat structure. Everything goes into a folder with a descriptive title at the root level. This works suprisingly well, again in both the PC and the real world. I end up with lots of folders many of which have only 1 file or paper in them. But stuff is so easy to find. When finding a file/document I can usually go strait to t it. Even if I can't, I rarely have to look in more than two folders.

Maintaining a complex heiarchy requires the user to keep a mental map of the heiarchy in mind to find stuff. Using a very flat system only requires the user to be able to use the alphabet. Using my complex heiarchy system used to make me feel organized and smart. Now my system is quite dumb but it works so much better.