Linux user Application Data folder path

[Peter Alcibiades]

Written in the hope that this will not be insultingly elementary!  But if
you've no Linux installation handy, probably it won't be.  

Probably the best thing would be to get a live CD and take a look at how it
works.  A reasonable one would be Mandriva One 2009 Gnome, or 2008 Spring
KDE (not 2009 KDE).  Realize that you can install this and most other big
distributions onto an existing Windows box, and it will take care of
partitioning and so on and give you a dual boot system where you choose at
boot time whether to run Windows or Linux.  I think this is a lot better
than running Linux in a VM, but opinions do differ.

Its not quite clear what you mean by 'the user applications folder'.  There
isn't really any such thing in the way there is in Windows. Applications
which are native to your distribution will usually be found in /usr/bin. But
your user account will not be able to write to that. And that is not a
collection of folders as you might expect from Windows, its a collection of
binary files and some links. So to say that it is 'the user applications
folder' is not really correct, and certainly you cannot put preferences and
configuration files there. It is not really the applications folder, and it
is not user specific but system wide. The libraries these binaries depend on
will be in several places including user/lib.  All this should be left well
alone.

The configuration files for a particular user who is using a system wide
application will be in /home/user.  For instance, for the text editor geany,
they are in /home/user/.geany/geany.conf.  There is going to be one of these
for every user account on the system.

Decide whether you want your application installed for all users of the
system or just the one signed on.  If the former, put it in /opt, and put a
link to it someplace, like on the desktop, which will be /home/user/Desktop.
You'll have to put a link in for each user in the different desktops. 
You'll need the root password to write to /opt.

If the latter, put it in /home/user.  Its not very common for software to be
installed in the user's home folder, but it does happen.  My own rev
software is there. I don't put it in a dot folder however, since I want to
be able to get at it without looking through all the other invisible
folders. So then it would be in /home/user/theapp, for instance.  If you do
this, I would put the preferences in (for instance)
/home/user/theapp/.theappprefs.  This will make the prefs file invisible, if
that's what you want.

The user can make them visible again by checking 'show hidden files' in the
file manager.

The default folder may not behave quite as expected.  Its may not end up
being set as /home/user/theapp in the above example, but as /home/user, so
you might have to set it explicitly to what you want, or have the user do it
during installation.

Be aware that your user need not necessarily have a desktop to put icons on. 
That is, he'll always have a folder called /home/user/Desktop, but he may
not be running a desktop environment or window manager which puts icons on
the desktop in the Windows or MacOS way. Fluxbox is an example of a window
manager like this.  It might be something to cover in the Readme.

Peter



mfstuart wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Mark S.
> I can't try it because I don't have a Linux box available now.
> But will be putting the application out to beta sometime soon - next year
> :).
> 
> So if I do the following:
>   put specialFolderPath("Preferences") into tPath --for MacOS
>   put specialFolderPath(26) into tPath --for Windows
>   put ~/applications into tPath --for Linux
> 
> This should return me the path to the users applications folder?
> And after that if I append the software company name & application name,
> this should be OK for storing application information, such application
> settings?
> 
> Regards,
> Mark Stuart
> 
> 
> Mark Schonewille-3 wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Mark,
>> 
>> Try this: ~/applications
>> 
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Mark Schonewille
>> 
>> Economy-x-Talk Consulting and Software Engineering
>> http://economy-x-talk.com
>> http://www.salery.biz
>> Dutch forum: http://runrev.info/rrforum
>> 
>> We are always looking for new projects! Feel free to contact us to  
>> discuss your custom software project!
>> 
>> On 26 dec 2008, at 02:13, mfstuart wrote:
>> 
>>>
>>> Merry Christmas to all,
>>>
>>> As specialFolderPath(26) returns "C:/Documents and Settings/user/ 
>>> Application
>>> Data" on Windows,
>>> what is the equivilant on Linux?
>>>
>>> I need to know the path to the application data and then append the  
>>> software
>>> company name and application name to it.
>>>
>>> Windows eg: C:/Documents and Settings/mark/Application
>>> Data/SoftwareCompanyName/ApplicationName/
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Mark Stuart
>> 
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> 
> 

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