Documents, Music, Pictures, Public, Templates & Videos folders??

[Bou]

What the...? I just restarted my laptop and these folders had just been created automatically, what's the deal here?

Oh, and Documents added itself to the places menu, too. Weird.

[raja]

Doesnt sound too good. Hope that isnt default in gutsy.

[zekopeko]

if i remeber it has something to do with freedesktop standards.

i think that it would be nice for a default.

[Reb]

It's a nice default, as long as they don't unnecessarily recreate themselves from time to time I don't think anyone would have a problem with it.

[Bluecircle]

I'm on Gutsy and don't have this? (Don't really want it either).

[hugmenot]

Just edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to change the defaults.

[smartboyathome]

I like the idea of a documents, music, pics, ect folder on my computer. On feisty, I created them just to organize my stuff.

[ButteBlues]

if i remeber it has something to do with freedesktop standards.

i think that it would be nice for a default.
Yeah - it's part of the XDG spec IIRC.

[raja]

I like the idea of a documents, music, pics, ect folder on my computer. On feisty, I created them just to organize my stuff.

Which is exactly the point. Why have them as default when you can easily create the folders that you want?

[LancerDragoon]

Which is exactly the point. Why have them as default when you can easily create the folders that you want?

Which then begs the question. why not? It's just a bunch of folders, and Windows includes them by default so most new Ubuntu users might appreciate the folders being included by default. If you don't want them, you can delete them easily.

[gnomeuser]

I've had this on Fedora for a while, it's really sexy. All folders are translated on a per session basis and applications can now make an assumption as to where related files are (f-spot e.g. should start by looking in ~/Billeder the danish translation of ~/Photos.. the latter being hardcoded to add insult to injury).

Now long term I think we should switch to leveraging indexer technology like Beagle or Tracker (Stringi for the KDE folk) all using the Xesam standard (whenever they get that going, seems to be a harder job than expected) but right now, today, xdg-user-dirs is a great way to get that kind of functionality... at least approximately.

[no1wantdthisname]

Anyone know what the Templates folder is supposed to hold?

[ButteBlues]

Anyone know what the Templates folder is supposed to hold?
Document Templates, I believe.

eg. an MLA document for OpenOffice

[Wolki]

Anyone know what the Templates folder is supposed to hold?

Templates contains files that are offered for creation in the right-click -> Create Document menu in the file manager.

[raja]

Which then begs the question. why not? It's just a bunch of folders, and Windows includes them by default so most new Ubuntu users might appreciate the folders being included by default. If you don't want them, you can delete them easily.

I dont know. Just a sour feeling as if this is the beginning of a slide towards the windows approach where the os decides what is best for you. I just hope moving this folder around or removing it is not as difficult as doing the same with 'My Documents' on windows.

[AlexC_]

Raja, MacOSX also includes these default folders - so it's not exactly a 'Windows' thing. The Windows way would be creating these folders and whacking 'My' infront of them.

[BobCFC]

Which is exactly the point. Why have them as default when you can easily create the folders that you want?

I would like all my sound apps to open/save in the same default folders, same for graphics videos etc.

[tmske]

As long I can edit the defaults and so it's ok, I don't like my home to have all these separate folders.
I have a /home/user/media folder with music, video,...
I like this more, so I hope I can change it easily.

[ButteBlues]

I dont know. Just a sour feeling as if this is the beginning of a slide towards the windows approach where the os decides what is best for you. I just hope moving this folder around or removing it is not as difficult as doing the same with 'My Documents' on windows.
Oh calm yourself and stop with the attempted-FUD.

This is a _desktop agnostic standard set forth_. If you dislike them so, just remove them.

[LancerDragoon]

I wouldn't be using the /home/<username>/Music folder either, since I put all my music on an external HD, but it would be nice to have, certainly. And so long as things can be changed easily, not by just deleting the folders, but by changing defaults in apps that look for media in those default folders, things should be fine.

Oh, and I created a folder called Documents in Home, and the folder now shows up in the places menu. I'm using Feisty, by the way.

[David Corrales]

I think it's a neat idea for organization.

[wilko10]

Which is exactly the point. Why have them as default when you can easily create the folders that you want?

Support in a large environment is easier with 'standards'

J

[volanin]

Oh, and Documents added itself to the places menu, too. Weird.

Documents is always automatically added to the places menu in every version of gnome.
Just create the folder /home/<username>/Documents (with capital D) and check it for yourself.

[Mathiasdm]

I wouldn't be using the /home/<username>/Music folder either, since I put all my music on an external HD, but it would be nice to have, certainly. And so long as things can be changed easily, not by just deleting the folders, but by changing defaults in apps that look for media in those default folders, things should be fine.

Oh, and I created a folder called Documents in Home, and the folder now shows up in the places menu. I'm using Feisty, by the way.
You can add a symlink if you want :p

[greeneemer]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=480229 :)
([IDEA] My Documents, from Gutsy Gibbon Idea Pool)

[ButteBlues]

You can add a symlink if you want :p
That's what I do.

[xncramar]

<sarcasm on>Ok, I'm a GTD believer ;) so I want all the things and programs look into my "Inbox" folder and than I move myself the data depending what they mean for me.<sarcasm off>...
It's a good Idea to clean up the mess created by all the applications that store data in they ".program" folder, but please don't leave the lazy windows (or mac) idea win the battle in "our field".
I'm from tech support of a big corporate so I see dozen of PCs per day and few (very few) people use those stupid "my folders" (ok often they went worst 'cause they use the desktop instead :)
No thanks...

[leech]

Basically, from my understanding of it, xdg-user-dirs is simply a script that you can modify to your liking and it'll auto-generate the folders every time you login or every time a new user is created.

Probably the reason I never used the folders in Windows that were like this is because they are buried within the file structure. In my opinion, Windows' file management is horribly broken anyhow. Hell when you first install XP, it actually tells you to not look at your files in the C:\ ! How stupid is that?

What could be cool with this is to set up the scripts to automatically create a folder that is a link to a file share through ssh or whatever, since Nautilus can do that. It'd be nice for a person with a MythTV box for example to be able to just save inside your "Video" folder and have it go directly to the MythTV box.

Just some thoughts. Fedora 7 set this up by default, and now I have all of the folders under Places on my Debian box (I installed Debian over Fedora 7, as nice as it was, it still wasn't Debian :D )

Leech

[Orra]

I deleted the folders in a violent rage*, and when I logged back on it brought up a dialog asking to rename (actually: recreate) my folders as I'd logged on with a different language (apparently). This internationalisation is good. I presume this is similar to what gnomeuser was describing when he said folders were translated on a session basis.

I bet I could really screw things up for myself by logging on as myself with two different sessions, in different locales. *evil laugh*. It wouldn't know where to find my files. *bigger evil laugh*.

Anyway, anyone notice how it creates a bookmark for Desktop in your places menu, even though there's already a special link to your Desktop?

* I'm just being melodramatic; don't worry...

[grendelkhan]

How do you get the new items to show up in the Places menu?