How To Manage Your Home Directory? 176
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?
simple really (Score:5, Funny)
Re:simple really (Score:2)
Re:simple really (Score:3, Funny)
And - seriously - came to me complaining that she was losing files. I was thinking bad hard disk or virus or... well, not that.
Cron jobs (Score:2, Funny)
I've also got cron jobs to rm -rf
mkdir subdirectory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:mkdir subdirectory (Score:2, Interesting)
It checks
In my spare time, I'm improving it. It's currently a combination of three or four scripts, bu
a tmp filder and a storage folder. (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:a tmp filder and a storage folder. (Score:2)
Daniel
My Home: (Score:2)
Mail
Desktop
Docs
Devel
eclipse
<projects>
MonoDevelop
<projects>
kdevelop
<projects>
others
<projects>
Trash
Re:a tmp filder and a storage folder. (Score:2)
I use a Documents folder for my docs (since GNOME and OS X both like to save things there). I have subdirs like "resume" and "school". school is organized by semester and class. Sometimes I put each assignment in a separate directory if it's (for example) a LaTeX document with lots of postscript graphics or datasets or such.
I then use a ~/projects folder for ongoing projects.
I have a ~/src folder for things like the kernel source.
I usually use my homedir as temporary sto
Re:a tmp filder and a storage folder. (Score:2)
Here's why, ifI have a bunch useless files lying around on my desktop it looks cluttered, everytime you log in you see your messy desktop. It forces you to keep it neat and organized.
Other than that I have a bunch of primary folders, each divided into sub folders for different topics,etc.
Images go under Photos, which are sorted by what kind of image, which can be broken down anther two or three times depending on exactly it's contents.
Music, Doc
My organisation (Score:5, Funny)
My home directory (Score:3, Interesting)
recompile everything by hand (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:recompile everything by hand (Score:2, Informative)
I use linux to avoid stupid things like "Desktop Folders". Isnt this article supposed to be about
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.
A tally (Score:2)
76 directories (of which 16 hidden), 38 files (18 hidden) in the home directory itself.
Re:A tally (Score:1, Funny)
rm -rf * (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:rm -rf * (Score:2)
Out of sight... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Out of sight... (Score:2)
This is modded funny, but this is exactly what I do. Here's my advice: If you're using GNOME (KDE might have this setting as well; I don't know) you can find a setting that makes your home dir the desktop dir. (You can't find it on any control panel, but it's under the GConf key /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir). Then I delete the ~/Desktop directory 'cuz I don't need it anymore. (I know this goes against freedesktop.org standards, but hey -- it's my computer; I can do what I want with it.)
Th
Here's how to do it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's how to do it.. (Score:2)
I have a single "Stuff" directory on the desktop. When I decide that it has too much crap in it, I go through it and move it all to a drive on another folder. There's a folder there /server/Work/Stuff that I stick it all in. I even have a folder in there called 'Done Stuff.'
Of course, this is all garbage. Important data gets separated and stored in other places. I usually keep a copy of everything that hits my drive, with exception of the Ads and images associated with web surfing. /Download gets a lo
Re:Here's how to do it.. (Score:2)
Re:Here's how to do it.. (Score:2)
Cheers,
Adolfo
if u have to live in the shit you make... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:if u have to live in the shit you make... (Score:2)
So I second this motion.
Re:if u have to live in the shit you make... (Score:2)
Dallas.
Call me (could get some interesting calls from this one) 469-583-4047
Re:if u have to live in the shit you make... (Score:1)
I have folders with manymany subdirectories for stuff that I have archived, but everything else gets filed into a "wip" (Work In Progress) directory until I have the time or inclination to deal with it.
Since I have so much of it, I file software and updates elsewhere (where it gets backed up all the same), with subdirectories such as "sys", "science", "web_utilities", "multimedia" and "cool".
how I does it: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:how I does it: (Score:2)
c: is OS, d: is documents (you dont need a reg hack to change the location of 'my documents')
just right click and move
great setup, easy to ghost the system drive without all the extras which are backed up elsewhere
the google way (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Funny)
Best when modified and run as root over luser dirs, of course. Quotas are for sissies.
Re:Home dir solution (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're relying on atime to pl
this way... (Score:2)
would be...
Toothpick\ -\ Super\ Size\ Me.mp3
My layout (Score:4, Informative)
~/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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My layout (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My layout (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My layout (Score:2)
Re:My layout (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My layout (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:My layout (Score:2)
My wife is an absolute non-techie and she's figured it out. How dumb is your gf?
Check early, check often (Score:4, Informative)
Something like this might work:
Then you run it as follows: 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: If you want to be a little safer you can just delete the originalYou 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.
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?
folders (Score:2)
If I need to create a temp directory somewhere, I put it into 'development'.
I have a docs directory for documents, and a personal directory for personal stuff (like my CV, annual leave forms, etc)
After that, it's really a matter of discipline - getting used to not creating temp folders in $Home, and test files, etc.
Over the years, I discovered that the more or
Right now? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:
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.
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
My $HOME (Score:2)
~/wip - Work In Progress - scripts that I'm working on or debugging with each having its own sub-directory, these are usually things I'm working on to make my life easier.
~/Documents - following the Redhat / Mandrake nomenclature, I keep all 'office' type documents under that main heading. Sub-folders for things that have more than one document.
~/Projects - similar to wip, but with things that generally have a dea
Home Scheme (Score:2)
Perhaps the biggest problem is applications that like to create temp files and applications that create dot files everytime you use them. Some applications will allow you to turn this behavior off but for the ones that don't, I use bash logout script to delete them.
sh (Score:1)
Pedantic. (Score:3, Informative)
- ~/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 (Score:3, Funny)
That's funny, I was thinking of suggesting 'animal', 'vegetable', 'mineral', etc...
Or perhaps using the 'Kingdom', 'Phylum', 'Class', etc... schema.
Re:Another schema (Score:3, Funny)
> 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
ThoseThatAreIncludedInThisClassifica
Two step process (Score:2)
What else do you need?
To quote google (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
My strategy? I've got folders like: Computer, Resea
Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell (Score:4, Insightful)
My personal machine is a mac as well, and my safari download location is my home directory. I actually like my home directory messy
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell (Score:2)
At this point, I'm intentionally just dumping files arbritrarily in a couple of directories. I COULD arrange them, but I'm actively not doing that.
Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell (Score:2)
My $HOME (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:My $HOME (Score:2)
Not quite - I symlink the cron files as you say, but they mostly do things like report IP back to a dyndns, check for updates and watch for various things. The dotfiles are actually symlinked from my home directory to the files in $HOME/usr/etc/dot. For instance,
There a
Data Sorting (Score:1)
Make a temp directory for any scratch pad stuff or files you know are short term. Learn to work with them there. Any products of your work get sorted and moved to known directories. Then every so often delete all the files in the temp directory.
Make a clean directory tree that you can navigate over and over. I have four main folders: temp, company, personal, a
Nobody has mentioned... (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I have a downloads, documents, gentoo, pictures, scripts, and work.
I keep a lot of stuff outside of home (Score:1)
It's pretty self-explanatory. The majority of my data is in /usr2/audio. Everything in /usr2/audio/lossy and /usr2/audio/lossless is sorted by artist and album (or date of show). /usr2/audio/incoming is a mess... stuff I've ripped, downloaded, etc.
~/tmp/ Directory (Score:1)
Story time (Score:5, Funny)
--Stephen
I'm organized for multiple machines (Score:2)
first off, I made a top-level directory to put all my 'data' type files in. that directory has lots of subdirectories, and when I create a new file I always create it in the right place, so it starts out organized.
under that top level directory, I have a directory called 'config'. under config is a subdirectory for each machine I use. then all my ~/.* files are symbolic links into the appropriate top/config/machine/ directory. that way, on any mach
Make it read-only (Score:3, Interesting)
My structure: (Score:1)
~/bin - for my scripts, small programs (one binary) etc. in my $PATH as first...
~/build/rpm and ~/build/src - rpm is my rpmbuild root env (linked with web/nfs server to serve packages) src is for stuff i play with compiling from source (testing before it goes as rpm)
~/doc/priv and ~/doc/work - obvious...
~/mail/ - also obvious...
~/tmp/ - for all temporary stuff like downloads etc.
other things like videos, media, pictures etc. are shared abve my home directory - so I don't keep them in my ~ - I keep t
ls -l (Score:2)
drwxr-x--- 3 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Sep 14 17:21 Desktop/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 9 Sep 5 21:08 docs -> Documents/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 27 Aug 31 13:22 Documents ->
drwxr-x--- 2 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Sep 10 08:01 drives/
drwxr-x--- 11 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Nov 17 21:11 install-files/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 16 Sep 1 12:17 music ->
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswe
My layout (Score:2)
~/downloads - All my downloads
~/downloads/nzb - NZB related things go here
~/media/music
~/media/video
~/work - This is staging area for all my ~/dev projects
~/src - If I compile anything from src that I didn't write, it goes here
~/tmp - general crap. I prefer to use this instead of
~/docs - Resumes, papers I have written, and notes of things I don't want to lose
I have been toying with the idea of automatically mounting my encrypted usb keys and syncing data back
Re:My layout (Score:2)
I have ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't make little files! (Score:4, Insightful)
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! (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
The same as my real life home. (Score:2)
but..
Both my $HOME and my desk are a mess......
temp directories (Score:2)
Extreme solution.... (Score:2)
Making progress... (Score:2)
I use Tomboy [beatniksoftware.com] to take care of my simple notes. Addresses, meetings, etc.. I eventually copy out of there and put into Evolution.
I recently told Firefox to download everything to ~/downloads/. I make a mess out of this.
~/projects for anything coming from CVS or home-grown.
like...iTunes!! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Use ~ as your desktop (Score:2)
Sad thing is I'm on OS X now and I don't know any way to do that in Aqua. I hate having shortcuts on my desktop to folders in ~
Re:Use ~ as your desktop (Score:2)
Sad thing is I'm on OS X now and I don't know any way to do that in Aqua.
Try Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager, and in that go to Users and your login ID. Under there, you'll see a setting for your Home directory that you can edit. I've never tried setting it to my Desktop or changing it at all, so maybe try it on a test account in case it all goes pear-shaped. But that's a way of doing it, anyway.
CVS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:CVS (Score:2)
Re:CVS (Score:2)
CVSHome [kitenet.net]
Flat and Alphabetical (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flat and Alphabetical (Score:2)
Re:Flat and Alphabetical (Score:2)
Projects
Engineering
Plant 1
Widget Machine A
Widget Machine B
Plant 2
Capital Projects
New Widget Capper Line
Downloads
Applications
Documents
Misc
and so on
Now my system is like this
Widget Machine A Plant 1
Widget Machine B Plant 1
New Widget Capper Line Plant 2
Downloaded Applications
Downloaded Documents
Downloaded Misc
and so on
in the above examples each line is a directory/folder.
So I may not remeber if the 'Wid
Project Folders, temp folders, and cron jobs (Score:2)
I also have a weekly cron that throws out everything in the temp folders to keep me from fil
Simply (Score:2)
Usually, i use the folloing directories:
src
tmp
temp
download
x
All more important files get into the folders they are supposed to be in the first place (like
After years in software developm
Don't sort according to filetype (Score:2)
For example: a text file can be a book but so can an audio file (audio book). If you sort according to filetype they will end up in a different directory. Even if they're the same book.
In my directory structure they're in documents\books because they're both books. I have
There will always
Create generic subject folders (Score:2)
~/bin
~/scripts (for occasionally-used scripts not in your $PATH, so as to avoid cluttering TAB-completed executable namespace)
~/economics (for us Econ nerds)
~/code (for personal programming projects)
~/texts (for various textfiles. Make subdirs for categories here too, e.g. tech, lovelife, journal, etc.)
~/pr0n (guess... also subcategorize by vids and pics)
~/kismet_dumps (for wardriving)
~/school (or ~/work - for things related to your boss (whe
my home dir... (Score:2)
by date? (Score:2)
Now to get to the topic of this thread, I think the same idea could be applied to the file system as well. Create a very simple directory hierarchy (work, fun...) that includes a "archives" subdir.
"archives" would contain subdirs named after the year of the fi
Simple and Clean. (Score:2)
D:\ = Mercury HD. Random crap that I never really go through anymore - mostly stuff left over from porting and backups.
E:\ = Mars HD. Music. Fifty-someodd gigs of music are on this drive, sorted by series/artist then album.
F:\ = Jupiter HD. Anime stuff. Root-level directories are simple - Fansubs, Music Videos, Doujinshi, et cetera.
G:\ = Venus HD. Installers for programs, their dependent files, and backups of map files and such for games.
H:\ =
Re:A few ways (Score:2)