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by heleninboodler 1223 days ago
> why should we respect maintainers who don't respect users?

Saying that using dotfiles instead of ~/.config means they "don't respect users" is a little dramatic, don't you think? Like it or not, unix has historically treated dotfiles as "hidden" and nobody expects you to get upset that they created a hidden file in your home directory without your consent. It's not really about respect, it's just convention you apparently don't like.

I currently have 60 dotfiles in my home directory and probably deliberately created less than 10 of those. The fact that anyone would be upset by this is news to me and most likely is news to a lot of the developers that created these things: cargo, dbus, docker, gem, gnome, gnupg, gphoto, java, kde, maven, mozilla, osquery, rpm, rustup, ssh, vagrant, vim, vscode, wget, yarn, zoom. Not that "this bad behavior is widespread" is a good excuse, but the point is that I don't think the world is at all in agreement that this is "bad behavior."
2 comments
SkeuomorphicBee 1222 days ago
Just to clarify, it is not just about "hidden" files looking good. There are many reasons one may want to move config/data/cache files to other locations, E.G. in my case I have a computer with home on a small partition that simply can't fit all the crap those misbehaving programs try to put there. I simply can't install Flatpacks on that machine because they obviously won't fit in a small home and can't be moved because of a maintainer who is very disrespectful to users (the bugs full with messages of users pleading for him to allow them to move apps to other partitions is disheartening).
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account42 1222 days ago
> Saying that using dotfiles instead of ~/.config means they "don't respect users" is a little dramatic, don't you think?

No I don't think so. For many applications (i.e. only config, no cache) it's literally an additional getenv and minimal logic when opening your config files. No additional dependencies needed. The amount of effort required is tiny compared to the benefit multiplied by the number of users that don't want dotfiles in their $HOME.

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