How do you organize your home directory?

ckester said:
ice, water and steam might be fun names too.
Click to expand...

vapor would be faster to type than steam because the letters are spaced between your hands. :) (Also more scientifically correct IMO - steam is vaporized H20, whereas vapor is any liquid in gaseous form.)

Either way, I think I'll stick with categorization based on file type and/or class rather than how often it's changed. I wouldn't want to have to look in multiple places to find something. I know it's a spreadsheet done for the general manager at store x, I look in Docs/StoreX/ForOthers/GM_Name/ and then look at the directory names under that - YYYY-MM-DD_ProjectName so that they stay in chronological order and yet are descriptive at the same time. :)
 
Funny, my first draft of that post had vapor instead of steam. I changed it because it sounded a bit pretentious next to the good old Anglo-Saxon words ice and water.

Anyway, I'm not very keen on a hierarchy based on volatility or solidity. My snd and flix directories might be more liquid than Agi93's, as I download new music or podcasts on a daily basis. In fact, they change more frequently than any of my src directories. But I wouldn't move them into a var directory because of that.

The reason the canonical system hierarchy separates volatile from constant or relatively non-volatile is because those are often placed on different drives or slices, with different permissions, backup strategies, etc.

Someone mentioned that they keep their multimedia files on a separate drive; I can see how that might help improve playback performance, since the drive wouldn't need to interleave seeks related to other tasks.
 
ckester said:
Anyway, I'm not very keen on a hierarchy based on volatility or solidity.

The reason the canonical system hierarchy separates volatile from constant or relatively non-volatile is because those are often placed on different drives or slices, with different permissions, backup strategies, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, now I see there's really no point to do this in my home directory. Anyway, after using my Mac for the past couple of hours, here's what I have in mind:

Code: 
Development/	for all personal scripts and software builds
	Compilation/	builds
	Executables/	scripts
Library/	archive of valuable configuration files, human-readable 
		documents, templates, and other reference-like things
	Configuration/	valuable configuration files
	Reference/	human-readable documents
	Templates/	.tex and other format templates
Multimedia/	self-explanatory
	Images/
	Movies/
	Sounds/
Text/		much like Documents/ on other systems
	Classwork/	has subdirectories for each class I'm in, which each 
			contain assignments for the respective class
	Wiki/		zim wiki files

I started wondering why Windows and Mac directories are like they are, and it seems its because they are simple and easy to understand. People using free operating systems almost always deviate from the Windows way, so I figure that must be because of how annoying it is to have "My Documents", in which "My Pictures", "My Movies", etc. are located. Looking back at my Mac, I realize that directories seem to almost always be one word, making it easy to type in a terminal, and the names are easy to understand (figure out). There also seems to be a distinct separation between directories intended for user interaction and those hidden and reserved for the system. The former always start with capital letters and have more meaningful names, unlike /usr, /var, /etc, and the like.

Since /home/user is my own little space and is undoubtedly intended for user interaction, I thought I should follow suit. This system seems to work well and make sense to me, and there are only four major directories in ~/ this way.

You may notice the absence of ~/xfr or ~/Transfers or whatever, and that is because I plan to set the download directory to ~/. I always deal with downloads as soon as they come, so this seems perfect. Anything important would simply be copied to the appropriate directory.


I'm probably spending WAY too much time on this, but getting my home directory just right has been driving me crazy!
 
Agi93 said:
Y
I'm probably spending WAY too much time on this, but getting my home directory just right has been driving me crazy!
Click to expand...

Not to worry. This might seem to be a trivial exercise, but trying to get everything "just right" is a good habit to get into. Many of the problems that people encounter with computers comes from inattention to detail or a lack of sensitivity to aesthetics.

I don't know about everyone else, but I use BSD because it's the most elegant thing I've ever found in computing. (Well, maybe except for Plan 9... ;))

So I see nothing to laugh at in wanting to have that elegance reflected even in such seemingly simple things like the arrangement of a home directory. On the contrary, I applaud you for your efforts!
 
Oh, I just love having everything organised so I know where everything is and ever ever have to use search. My current hierarchy has evolved slowly over time and it looks something like this:

Code: 
~/data+2d_graphics (various gimp stuff)
      +3d_models+ (various blender stuff)
      |         +model01
      |         +model02
      +audio+radio (playlists for internet streaming)
      |     +ringtones (for my mobile)
      |     +various (uncategorised)
      |     +music+artist_01+album01
      |           |         +album02
      |           +artist_02+album01
      |                     +album02
      +downloads(stuff from net and random mess)
      +emu+
      |   +dos
      |   +nes
      |   +snes
      |   +n64
      |   +psx
      +images+photos+place_01+year_01
      |      |               +year_02
      |      +wallpapers+res_01
      |      |          +res_02
      |      +various (uncategorised, usually some funny photos)
      +programming+graphics
      |           +games
      |           +freebsd
      |           +various
      |           +web
      +hardware+project_01
      |        +project_02
      +video+movies
      |     +series
      |     +various
      |     +streaming (like net radios)
      |     +trailers
      +text+books+author_01
           |     +author_02
           +software+
lang_c
                    +lang_c++
                    +lang_python
                    +lib_sdl
                    +lib_opengl
                    +os_freebsd
                    +os_win
            +
 
Oh snap, I've pressed something and my message got sent before I finished writing it.

Anyway, that's more-or-less how I organise my data directory. Because I keep all my stuff in ~/data instead of in ~/ I can back up my stuff and manage is more easily as it doesn't get messed up with automatically created files in ~/ (mainly dot files).

Because I like to manage all my files myself I hate it when some smart ass program tries to do it for me creating and changing files as it wish (mainly happens on windows).
 
viewing the whole hierarchy of your system

Im new to BSD. New to any command line style OS (exception (winxp internal terminal))
I was wondering if there is a command that shows all of the os's hierarchy the
way you run the sysinstalled to your disk. I cant figure bsd out.
and why is this symbol sometimes ~/ and sometimes /?
Have searched Google trying to find any subject on the viewing of your own machines hierarchy. Thanks.
 
cromwellot said:
Im new to BSD. New to any command line style OS (exception (winxp internal terminal))
I was wondering if there is a command that shows all of the os's hierarchy the
way you run the sysinstalled to your disk. I cant figure bsd out.
and why is this symbol sometimes ~/ and sometimes /?
Have searched Google trying to find any subject on the viewing of your own machines hierarchy. Thanks.
Click to expand...

hier(7) is helpful. The / serves as a directory delimiter/separator (just like \ on DOS systems). A naked / means your root directory (as in what you see when you type [cmd=""]ls /[/cmd]), any pathname beginning with / is absolute (QV). ~/ is shorthand for your $HOME directory, that is your working directory (QV) when you first log in. You can change to it with any one of [cmd=""]cd ~/[/cmd], [cmd=""]cd $HOME[/cmd], or (in most implementations) [cmd=""]cd[/cmd] by itself. builtin(1) covers a lot of ground (including [red]cd[/red]).
 
This manual page documents the default FreeBSD file system layout, but
the actual hierarchy on a given system is defined at the system adminis-
trator's discretion. A well-maintained installation will include a cus-
tomized version of this document.
But it doesnt show my own installation on my disk. Its for example information purpose
 
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