Honey I hid the dot-files - Misspelled Nemesis Club

Backing up my home folder this weekend, in readiness for the Ubuntu Intrepid beta I spotted some unusual path names scroll by:

~/.local/share/applications
~/.local/share/desktop-directories
~/.local/share/gnome-do
~/.local/share/mime
~/.local/share/Mono Paint
~/.local/share/Trash
~/.local/share/tracker`

It turns out that the hidden folders $HOME/.local/, $HOME/.config, and $HOME/.cache are default values, specified by the Freedesktop.org Basedir specification. To override these values one may set some environment varibles:

$XDG_DATA_HOME for user specific application data.
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME for user specific configuration data.
$XDG_CACHE_HOME for user specfic ‘non-essential’ data.

The BaseDir specification has shades of the Windows user profile file structure, but in a good way. Agreeing on such cross-desktop conventions will solidify Linux as a desktop platform for ISVs, but there’s still a way to go. Other Freedesktop.org specifications build on BaseDir, for instance the Trash specification. So now Gnome’s trash applet knows where a deleted item should be restored to.