This seems like a simple question that every application developer would have, but I can't find the answer. Per the latest [XDG Basedir Spec](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/basedir-spec/) , there are many directories that should be defined in environment variables. As one example: > There is a single base directory relative to which user-specific configuration files should be written. This directory is defined by the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Let's say my Bash script saves a user config - and I want to follow the XDG spec - How do I find $XDG_CONFIG_HOME? It makes sense that you would do something like

#!/bin/bash

# Print out $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
echo Your XDG_CONFIG_HOME is: [$XDG_CONFIG_HOME]

But running this on a fresh Ubuntu and Fedora Silverblue install both give the output:

$ ./test.sh
Your XDG_CONFIG_HOME is: []

Which seems totally useless, since that would mean on fresh desktop installs of Ubuntu and Fedora Silverblue, my app would write config files into the running directory. Yet, I can see so many applications properly putting the data in ~/.config/. Where are these apps finding the XDG environment variables, and how can I find them too?

I installed a basic Ubuntu server, and then installed a Unity session. The Nautilus sidebar won't show user directories. .config/user-dirs.dirs ----------------------

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

Does Nautilus depend on a certain package such that when not installed nautilus doesn't search for XDG User Directories?

I know about that xdg-user-dir stuff that helps make home subdirs in desired language. My locale is Russian and the system created 'download', 'documents', etc dirs in Russian language, and Nemo shows them as they are. But that's not cool (not handy when typing in terminal). I know how I can recreate these dirs with English names, okay. But what I want is: **let real dirs on disk have English names but have Nemo to show them in Russian, like Windows does.** In Windows (and AFAIK, in KDE too), there are hidden desktop.ini files that let override the display name for a folder they are in. Nemo seems not to not work that way. Is it possible in Cinnamon/Nemo?

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/man1/xdg-user-dirs-update.1.html Why is only the last directory being set in the xdg-user-dirs file? % xdg-user-dirs-update --dummy-output ~/test \ --set DOCUMENTS $HOME/Apples \ --set MUSIC $HOME/Bananas \ --set PICTURES $HOME/Oranges \ --set VIDEOS $HOME/Pears % cat ~/test # This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update # If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're # interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run. # Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped # homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an # absolute path. No other format is supported. # XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Pears"

Is there a way to add a custom directory to the default shortcuts to Files' sidebar? Not as a bookmark, as a default XDG directory? For instance, I've added XDG_WORK_DIR="$HOME/Work" to .config/user-dirs.dirs to define a new 'Work' XDG folder, which seems to work as xdg-user-dir WORK does output /home/user/Work. However, it still doesn't show the 'Work' shortcut in Files. I've also noted that the default 'Templates' directory is also not shown, so I'm assuming these shortcuts are defined elsewhere - where? It would also be cool to add a specific folder icon as used by the other default shortcuts.

I built for fun and convenience a portable customized Kali live ISO with gnome that I can carry easily around on my USB pen. I am struggling on two very stupid and useless things that, anyway, I would like to fix just for the sake of completeness. The one I am asking in here is about hiding the desktop icons that get automatically shown in the Desktop (home directory gets expanded in the desktop). Some more details: - Kali 6.1.0-kali9-amd64 - Gnome version 44.0 - I use persistence for /home and for /opt, so all ~/.config and user configurations will be persisted, while changes to /usr, /etc and so on can be easily changed in the build process of the iso. I tried to play with both ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and dconf-editor without any real success.

I had Ubuntu-14.04 installed in a minimum configuration, i.e. with no X Windows support. Later I added x-server packages for my card, and a lightweight WindowManager (I don't want KDE or GNOME), so I normally launch X with startx, however someone keeps on creating Documents, Desktop, Download, Video, Music etc. directories in my $HOME. I thought this isually done by "advanced" desktop environments. What application/daemon can be behind this anyways?

I wanted to have some of the sub-folders of my home directory (like Music, Downloads,Videos) on my hard-disk-raid instead of my SSD. Therefore I deleted those folders in my home directory, recreated them on the RAID and made symlinks pointing from my home-folder to the RAID (e.g. /home/user/Music > /mnt/home-big-data/user/Music). However, the newly created folders don't have the correct meta-data-properties in Gnome 3 (wrong icon, folders won't open as Music folder, etc.). Which is the best way to remap those features to the folders on the RAID? I tried editing the /home/user/.config/user-dirs.dirs and setting XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads" (according to the symlink) but it was resetted to XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/" after reboot. Another thing I tried was using gvfs-set-attribute to reset the standard-icon, but this also failed. Which would be the correct way to do that?

I'm referring to: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html I have the following files in my

.config

directory:

~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

:

# ...
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/downloads"
# ... there are only comments in this file, except the line above ...

(I guess this file needs to be sourced somewhere? But where and how?)

~/.config/user-dirs.conf

:

enabled=False

(This file seems to be necesseary to prevent

-user-dirs-update

from overwriting

~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

.) However, **

$XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR

is not set when I run a shell.** __Where/How are the XDG_*_DIR user directory variables supposed to be set?__ Am I supposed to source

~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

in one of the files sourced by my login shell (e.g. in

.bash_profile

)?

[Based on the XDG Base Directory Spacifications](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html#:~:text=actions%20history%20(logs%2C%20history%2C%20recently%20used%20files%2C%20%E2%80%A6)) , $XDG_STATE_HOME should store history and log of the programs. But it is very common to see UNIX programs storing these kind of stuff at $XDG_CACHE_HOME, that is, $HOME/.cache. Why?

On PCs, the XDG Desktop specifications allow the individual desktops to set different folders for various data. When writing an application that will only ever be run on servers, should one simply hardcode /etc/myapp, /var/cache/myapp etc, or are there potential environment variables or similar that should be checked?

I have a small office with 5 desktops and a server, all of them running on Debian. I have just upgraded the clients to Stretch and see only 1 error in the journal that bothers me: > gnome-settings-: failed to create profile from EDID data: failed to save ICC file: Error opening file ‘/var/data/users/Debian-gdm/icc/edid-93ed9b01fe8febb07668e99b557191e9.icc’: Access denied gnome-settings-: failed to create profile from EDID data: failed to save ICC file: Error opening file ‘/var/data/users/Debian-gdm/icc/edid-93ed9b01fe8febb07668e99b557191e9.icc’: Access denied gnome-settings-: failed to set screen _ICC_PROFILE: Opening file ‘/var/data/users/vincent/icc/edid-93ed9b01fe8febb07668e99b557191e9.icc’ failed: Access denied As our users $HOME folders are mounted through NFS, I have made sure that all $XDG_DATA and $XDG_CACHE (at least for regular users) are stored locally on the client. Back in 2014 I had found a manual to do it like this: In /etc/profile.d/xdg_dirs.sh: if [ "$USER" == "root" ]; then unset XDG_CACHE_HOME unset XDG_DATA_HOME else test -d $XDG_CACHE_HOME || mkdir -p $XDG_CACHE_HOME test -d $XDG_DATA_HOME || mkdir -p $XDG_DATA_HOME fi In /etc/security/pam_env.conf: XDG_CACHE_HOME DEFAULT="/var/cache/users/@{PAM_USER}" XDG_DATA_HOME DEFAULT="/var/data/users/@{PAM_USER}" I'm pretty sure this has messed up the correct permissions for the Debian-gdm user, but I don't know how to solve it. I tried creating the dir and giving r+w permissions to both Debian-gdm and the default user-groups, but this didn't work. I also tried exclusing the Debian-gdm user from the above script by adding: if [ "$USER" == "root" ] || [ "$USER" == "Debian-gdm" ]; then , but that didn't work as well. Any thoughts?

I guess ~/.config (XDG_CONFIG_HOME) is not correct because that way users have to be constantly aware which files are safe to commit to their dotfiles repository.

Today I was surprised to ssh into my box running Arch Linux and find that /run/user/$(id -u) didn't exist. The [XDG Base Directory Specification](https://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html) says: > $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR defines the base directory relative to which user-specific non-essential runtime files and other file objects (such as sockets, named pipes, ...) should be stored. The directory MUST be owned by the user, and he MUST be the only one having read and write access to it. Its Unix access mode MUST be 0700. > > The lifetime of the directory MUST be bound to the user being logged in. It MUST be created when the user first logs in and if the user fully logs out the directory MUST be removed. If the user logs in more than once he should get pointed to the same directory, and it is mandatory that the directory continues to exist from his first login to his last logout on the system, and not removed in between. Files in the directory MUST not survive reboot or a full logout/login cycle. On a systemd box, is /run/user/$(id -u) the preferred place for $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (even if it needs to be created?) If not, what's best practice for creating $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR? How do I ensure that that the directory is deleted only when I have "fully" logged out? (Does "fully" mean that mean all processes created by login shells have exited? How to check for that?)

Personally I'd like to adhere to to XDG Base Directory Specification to make my utility more portable. However when doing so it requires me to re-implement for systems that do not have the XDG_ parameters implemented. This on it's own is not much of a problem as the XDG Base Directory Specification covers this detailing what to do instead. For example if XDG_DATA_HOME is unset or empty use ~/.local/share instead. However what to do if $HOME is unset or empty? Should I adhere to the system wide options at least for where it is in the XDGBDS given (e.g. no $HOME but more /etc/*something* etc.)? Honestly I have very little experience under which circumstances $HOME actually is empty, so it's hard for me to decide well here.

I find more and more tools that put executables into ~/.local/bin. I am old and for me ~/bin is the place in my $HOME for executables. Where did this crazy new fashion originate? Why are people doing this? How widespread is it? Is it formalized anywhere? It is not in the XDG directory specification. There is a related question: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/316765/which-distributions-have-home-local-bin-in-path A comment to another question refert to https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0370 which had it back in 2008 already: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/240037/why-did-this-program-install-into-local-bin-thats-the-first-time-i-have-s

When logged in to the desktop: $ env | grep XDG_ XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg XDG_SESSION_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session4 XDG_MENU_PREFIX=xfce- XDG_SEAT=seat0 XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=xfce XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 XDG_GREETER_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/lightdm-data/mattd XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=XFCE XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0 XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user XDG_VTNR=1 XDG_SESSION_ID=12 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/local/share:/usr/share When logged in through SSH: $ env | grep -i xdg XDG_SESSION_TYPE=tty XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user XDG_SESSION_ID=16 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 Why is my environment different when logged in through SSH? I am running Fedora 30.

I want the XDG specification folders in my home directory to be lowercase. I've created a file ~/.config/user-dirs.conf and updated it as such: enabled=True filename_encoding=UTF-8 DESKTOP=desktop2 DOWNLOAD=downloads2 TEMPLATES=templates2 PUBLICSHARE=public2 DOCUMENTS=documents2 MUSIC=music2 PICTURES=pictures2 VIDEOS=videos2 I did a full reboot and logged back into my desktop environment (Xfce) and the folders in my home directory are unchanged. I am observing the directory tree on the left side of Thunar and Caja to determine if a change has taken affect. I've also placed a file in the ~/Desktop folder which should disappear when ~/desktop2 is used instead. According to man user-dirs.conf: > Users can have their own ~/.config/user-dirs.conf file, which > overrides the system-wide configuration. These values are written to user-dirs.dirs, as it says within: > This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update

I would like to set the root of some of my mounts as the user-dirs, however when using the root it returns nothing. Setting root mount $ xdg-user-dirs-update --set VIDEOS /mnt/videos/ $ cat /home/hutber/.config/user-dirs.dirs | grep XDG_VIDEOS_DIR XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/mnt/videos/" Trying to view files in videos:

hutber@hutber:~$ ll /home/hutber/Videos/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 hutber hutber 4096 May 11 15:43 ./
drwxr-xr-x 34 hutber hutber 4096 Jun  1 11:45 ../

Although I did some research on this subject, I couldn't reach the exact information I wanted. Actually, not exactly disclosed, everyone approached in a different way. For the: Filesystem Hierarchy Standard I should store my files at: - **Temp files:** /var/temp/app_name/* or /temp/app_name/* - **Cache files:** /var/cache/app_name/* - **Config files:** ~/.config/app_name/* - **Log files:** /var/log/app_name/* - **Data files (database, etc.):** ??? **Q1:** Is that the right approach for the recent systems? For the XDG standart that explained here : - **Temp files:** ??? or /temp/app_name/* - **Cache files:** ~/.cache/app_name/* - **Config files:** ~/.config/app_name/* - **Log files:** ??? - **Data files (database, etc.):** ??? I cant understand why we store a cache file in the ~/.cache. It doesn't make any sense to me because there was a built-in cache folder called /var/cache In that case, I'm confused. Everywhere I investigate, there have been different approaches. **Q2:** Where should we put the files (datas, logs, temps, configs, etc.) for a pure Linux distribution (which does not use $XDG) to create applications? **Q3:** Some applications use the Linux structure, but some of use the XDG structure. How do they choose this? According to what situation? Do they use $XDG environment variables if we're using them? According to the above situation, my env | grep -i "XDG" output: XDG_VTNR=1 XDG_SESSION_ID=1 XDG_DATA_DIRS=/home/furkan/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 XDG_SEAT=seat0 **P.S:** *I don't know the parts I'm showing with* ???