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The choice not to create these directories basically doesn't exist, because all sorts of software will automatically create them if they don't exist, their creation isn't centrally orchestrated. A while back I was using a minimal i3-based desktop and when I launched transmission-gtk it thought I might want a "Downloads" folder, and would create it whenever it launched, even though it had been configures to download files elsewhere.

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That not really true. Most desktop environments will create the directories on session startup but depending on the DE that behavior can be disabled (in xfce for example has a service in the session you can disable).

It is true that applications will create these directories if they don't exist. But you can fix this by setting the XDG user directories[0] to something that isn't in your home directory. I set them all to a subdirectory under `~/.xdg-user-dir/`, but you could just as easily set them to `/tmp`. Nothing has recreated ~/Documents on my system in years.

[0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories

I was not aware of that behaviour. I agree that should not happen. Or the user should be asked if they want that. This should very much be under the control of the system and the apps the user chooses to manage the system. In a capability-based OS, apps would not be able to misbehave like this, unless granted the capability.

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