All of our development machines have multiple drives mapped to specific functionality:
C: System
D: Data (business data and main work area for product design data)
F: Library (stuff you rarely touch, PDF's, books, references, "knowledgebase", etc.)
G: Backup (external)
S: Swap and Scratch Files (this is actually a RAM-based 128 GB drive for speed)
Z: Development (mostly for web development, VM storage, etc.)
The idea is that the C drive can be taken out and shredded and the most valuable part of the computer, the data, is unharmed. Decades ago I learned --the hard way-- that storing your data on the same drive as the OS/system files is a dangerous thing.
The other thing this facilitates is backup. You can backup and restore each of the logical/functional units separately, as full drives.
This also makes upgrading the system or the entire computer far simpler. The separation between OS and data makes it so.
Way back when, before the registry was a thing, you could upgrade your OS without having to reinstall the applications. While I understand the advantages of common DLL's and the centralized management of common settings and code, I do miss the ability to not only separate data from the OS, but also applications. I don't think that is ever coming back.
One of the primary motivations for using a RAM disk was to not beat-up SSD's with the kind of access swap space gets.
The advantage of a hardware RAM-based drive is that it is extremely fast. When these machines were built, this was the fastest way to get data on and off a swap drive.
Today SSD's are super fast. On some machines we now have a separate dedicated 250 GB SSD for swap. If it craps out, you throw it away and pop in a new one. No worries about comingling valuable data with swap space.
Well ~ is basically just a shortcut to /users/ChuckNorris89. It's kind of surprising MS hasn't mapped ~ to go to basically the Windows home folder. In R on Windows you can use ~ to go there at least which is nice.
It works great but you won't escape the merriad of system folders in Documents or Pictures that way. Apps, games and the OS itself flooding these folders is the main problem why file management on Windows sucks.
Historically /bin and /sbin contained the binaries that were necessary to bring up the system (especially to mount the /usr partition, which was "best practice" to have separately from the root and /boot partitions). Nowadays most distros just symlink them to /usr/(s)bin
/usr/sbin is for utilites that only root should use, whereas /usr/bin is for regular applications managed by your system (i.e.: your distro's default package manager).
I understand this is (probably) a tongue-in-cheek comment, but the "My" prefix was infantile and terrible for scanning the alphabetically ordered list of folders ("My Documents", "My Music", "My Whatever"), so dropping this nonsense feels like a step in the right direction.
It still baffles me though how the Windows designers assumed it would be a great idea to bless me with a predefined "3D Objects" folder (right under "This PC"), which comes at the top of the list due to alphabetical ordering, and can't be removed. I wonder what percentage of users actually need this.
The other thing this facilitates is backup. You can backup and restore each of the logical/functional units separately, as full drives.
This also makes upgrading the system or the entire computer far simpler. The separation between OS and data makes it so.
Way back when, before the registry was a thing, you could upgrade your OS without having to reinstall the applications. While I understand the advantages of common DLL's and the centralized management of common settings and code, I do miss the ability to not only separate data from the OS, but also applications. I don't think that is ever coming back.