[Joker_vD]

> why do I still have programs on Linux that don’t use xdg directories?

Because there are Linux developers who never heard of XDG and just put their stuff wherever. And since ignoring XDG doesn't makes your application completely unusable, they have pretty much zero incentive to learn about it. Crazy world, isn't it?

[denton-scratch]

XDG is a specification of Free Desktop, a body that I don't trust. Standardizing filesystem locations can't be a bad thing; but an awful lot of it is tied into the requirements of GNOME Desktop, a project which seems to be trying to rule the world, and which I don't want to help with.

Perhaps if XDG were cut loose from the Free Desktop project, more developers and maintainers would pay more attention to it.

[Joker_vD]

That's one reason. Another reason is that while some effort was spent on writing this spec, apparently (?) almost no effort was spent on promoting/enforcing it: there is another top-level comment in this thread from a 10-year Linux application developer that says they've learned about XDG from this very post.

And indeed, there are lots of tremendously popular apps out there (Slack, for instance) that use e.g. $HOME/Downloads as a default download directory instead of $(xdg-user-dir DOWNLOAD), and most users don't mind.

[forgotpwd16]

Because '$HOME/Downloads' is the default for `xdg-user-dir DOWNLOAD` and most users never change it.

[Joker_vD]

Only in English locales. Although yes, most users are in that locale.