Shameless plug: I am the author.
But what’s the difference? It’ll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.
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.
/etc is a standard, defined in the filesystem hierarchy standard. This is not:
freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, but we are not an official standards body. There is no requirement for projects to implement all of these specifications, nor certification.
Below are some of the specifications we have produced, many under the banner of ‘XDG’, which stands for the Cross-Desktop Group.
Its nit-picking, but this is a specification, i.e a preference, not an official standard. It would be great if everyone would agree on just one of these to use, but that isn’t a foregone conclusion. Even the actual standard, the FHS, isn’t followed by popular OS’s like NixOS.
Specification, WHATEVER 🙄
The point is it exists for a reason, and clear purpose.
/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.
/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?
- On Fedora Atomic, changing
/etcis 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/etcis kept inside a sub-directory of/usr. Furthermore, all changes compared to the pristine copy are kept track of. - On NixOS, changes have to be applied through
configuration.nix. Though, regardless, it’s effectively possible to edit and populate/etclike it is on other distros. - It’s explicitly mentioned that
/etcdoes not belong to the immutable base.
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.
🙄
Someone asking a question doesnt merit the insult of saying they “would never ask if they used a terminal.” I have no particular dog in this fight, but not being a dick isn’t that hard.
It may actually be the best now, but so were the 14 others that came before it. Your stated reasons are the same reasons as everyone agreeing to use any other standard. Consistency, predictability, automation,ease of backup/restore, etc.
What sets this standard apart from all the rest? Based on their own description, they aren’t even an official standard, just one in “very active” use.
So why this, specifically? Just because its what you’re already doing?
Someone asking a question doesnt merit the insult of saying they “would never ask if they used a terminal.” I have no particular dog in this fight, but not being a dick isn’t that hard.
This is true, and something that I’m working on. For some reason my brain is uncharitable in these situations and I interpret it not as a simple question but a sarcastically hostile put down in the form of a question. In this case, “Why would you be dumb and not just put things in /home”. That really is a silly interpretation of the OP question, so I apologize.
As to using this standard, just because this is your preferred standard, doesnt mean its the only standard.
Sure, but the OP was essentially asking “Why isn’t dumping everything into a user’s /home the standard? Why are you advocating for something different?”
Based on their own description, they aren’t even an official standard, just one in “very active” use.
There are a LOT of “unofficial standards” that are very impactful. System D can be considered among those. The page you link to does talk about a lot of specifications, but it also says that a lot of them are already under the XDG specification or the reason for XDG is to bring such a scheme under a single specification, i.e. XDG.
So why this, specifically? Just because its what you’re already doing?
- yes I do use it, so I am definitely biased in that regard
- it bring a bunch of disparate mostly abandoned specification into a single, active one
- it’s the active specification that has learned from past attempts
Weird to me that you apparently think the only way of viewing files is in a terminal
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
To give one example, what if someone wants to have more than one set of options for the same app? That’s something I’ve needed before, and it’s really hard to accomplish if the app always looks in one specific place for its options.
Oh so it makes it impossible to change config path? Yea that’s a bit inconvenient but you always can just make many files and replace the file in the right directory with the one you want.
I wish they used them all, especially XDG_CACHE_HOME which can become pretty big pretty fast.
And i wish there was a separate XDG_LOG_HOME or $HOME/.local/log, with logrotate preconfigured to look there.
I didn’t know about this (and thankfully, haven’t written anything public). I’ve been trying to fix an install script for an OSS project that doesn’t work on immutable distros, and using the XDG Base Directory specs might just be the panacea I was looking for!
Whatever happened to Linux being all about choice? Do you want that or not?
Choice, huh? I can’t choose where the config files are stored unless I am willing to either dig into an obscure setting, modify the source code and recompile (repeat every time there’s an update), or contact the developer’s smug beard using smoke signals.
Are there other relevant standards? The XDG base directory specification has been around for a long time, and is well established.
Maybe your comment wooshed over my head; if so I apologize.
Well, when software supports this standard, you as a user have a way to not confirm to it by setting the env variables to whatever you want, even per app. So you have two choises, either use it as is or change it.
But if software doesn’t supportthe spec, there is no choise of using it. So ons choise less.
To conform to a standard or do something else are each a choice. If you can justify your choice then perhaps it’s a good one.
This standard makes your software’s paths user-configurable, giving users a choice.
This would just further complicate things for me. It assumes that 1) the system even has a windowing system/desktop environment or 2) all the installed software is XDG-aware. Most of the time I’m fiddling with headless environments.
It’s not too hard to check for XDG support first and use a few hardcoded directory paths if that is unavailable.
It’s even easier to ignore it altogether, which is what I do. I don’t use “a few” non-XDG-aware things; I use lots an lots of them.
Are you saying that you don’t want to write your software according to the XDG spec, or that you don’t want to set the XDG env vars on your system? If it’s the second that’s fine - apps using XDG work just fine if you ignore it. If it’s the first I’d suggest reconsidering because XDG can make things much easier for users of your software who have system setups or preferences that are different from yours; and using XDG doesn’t cause problems for users who ignore it.
OP’s recommendation is aimed mostly at software authors.
So yes, “XDG” stands for “Cross-Desktop Group” - but I don’t agree that using the spec assumes a windowing system. The base directory spec involves checking for certain environment variables for guidance on where to put files, and falling back to certain defaults if those variables are not set. It works fine on headless systems, and on systems that are not XDG-aware (I suppose that means systems that don’t set the relevant env vars).
OTOH as another commenter pointed out the base directory spec can make software work when it otherwise wouldn’t on a system that doesn’t have a typical home directory layout or permissions.
