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I wish every OS had a space that is only and truly my space. No predefined directories, no config files that I did not put there myself, and no app should ever create files or directories there.

I settled a very long time ago to organize all my own data into projects under /proj and an alias `cdp` for `cd /proj`. That was what decades ago my colleagues were doing, and it has worked well for me ever since.

I appreciate the[1] home dir as a place for config files mostly and despise it for having become the system's junkyard otherwise.

[1] I'm hesitant to say 'my' because since everyone seems to put all their junk there, it does not feel like it is mine at all.



/data has been that area for me. It has been common practice since the late 90s to separate OS and data on completely different devices even

The homedirs belong on the OS drives and are managed by the OS. Anything you want to keep safe goes on the data volume where backups run.

It’s also very nice to just disconnect the data drives before any upgrades. You can’t corrupt a filesystem that isn’t even present to the system


I would say that ~/Documents is pretty good here. The only trouble I have had is it being the default save location of some apps. But I haven't had something yet write there without any explicit action.




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