Re: Re: I hate this theme.

On this day of 03/01/2007 11:42 AM, Hale, Paul saw fit to scribe:
> I forgot that Linux can tell the difference between "User" and "user".
> The capitalization I think is just the grammar thug in me.

Yes, I know the feeling... I used to capitalize my directories, like
~/Data, ~/Applications, ~/Development until it got really old having to
press the shift key every time I wanted to go somewhere. :-)


> I can live
> without the capitalization. But I really like that it is easily
> understood that Program Files contains all my installed apps. But bin is
> not very descriptive. 

bin means binaries, but no, it's not necessarily very descriptive. And
all the binaries are dumped somewhat unceremoniously into /usr/bin and
/usr/local/bin (and /bin, I suppose, and ~/bin). What makes it more than
ok for me is having an excellent package manager like Synaptic, which
"just works" and lets me add/remove programs without really thinking
about where they are going to be installed.


> Document and Settings is a bit long winded, but
> users would do just fine. I think that there is not really a need for
> abbreviations. 

Well, /home servers the purpose of the "users" directory. And contrary
to Windows, Linux (and Unix of course) is extremely good at letting you
pick up your home directory (especially to so-called "dot files") and
moving them somewhere else, thereby maintaining your complete setup.

For example, I have a tar files that contains my .vimrc, .vim directory,
.zshrc, .zsh-aliases and a few other things. When I come to a Linux
system I have not used before, I can get the tar file off my server,
untar it and presto, my entire working environment is right there! Try
doing that in Windows. :-)


As for abbreviations, I agree with you. With tab-completion, it's even
less important to have abbreviations.

Incidentally zsh's tab completion is incredibly nice: I can type:

cd d/d/d/src<TAB> and it automatically expands that to
cd development/darkstone/darkstonemud/src

Or I can do
cd d/s/cs2/h<TAB> and I get:
cd data/school/cs224m-multi-agent-systems/homework

I'm loving it. :-) It lets me use very verbose directory names, which I
like because it makes it clear to me what is where, but it also saves me
from having to type them out, and even (heaven forbid) using
tab-completion on each name individually.



As for abbreviations, I basically don't have any anyhow; my home folder
has these sub-folders:

applications/
applications-src/
archives/
bin/
bin-lua/
data/
Desktop/
development/
drivers/
incoming/
mail/
media/
music/
PicasaDocuments/
private/
public_html/
stuff-to-move/
tmp/
web/
workspace/

The only abbreviations I see are "tmp" and "bin", but "bin" for me isn't
really an abbreviation anymore...


> That being said, I am sure once I do switch to Linux (it is only a
> matter of time) I will just get used to it.

I imagine so. I got used to it. Well, really, I came to just accept some
of it. I'm not sure, for instance, what "usr" really stands for, or
rather, why it stands for "user" (which is my guess). I'm guessing that
it means "stuff for users", because /usr is where program files (data,
binaries, doc, etc.) are stored. But yes, you definitely get used to it
after a while.


>> What is this about? I don't have any capital letters in any 
>> of my directories
> 
> I think he was just referring to my capitalization in the previous
> email.

Yup!

Cheers,
- David

-- 
David C. Haley
http://david.the-haleys.org

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