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Comment by lomlobon | Hacker News Reader

I've long given up on keeping a clean home folder because so many software do this and keeping it clean is a constant chore. Now I just make a real_home folder in my 'home' and put all my actual stuff there. They can use the ~ landfill

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I stopped using that software no matter how painful it was some games included. I wanted to play BG2 and the remake from GOG just litter the Documents folder even when running though Wine. Well, no game for then. Pity. I want my computer to serve me and to have my own files where yo want them.

Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?

It does. Run `winecfg` and see ‘Folders’ under the ‘Desktop Integration’ tab. Wine used to link these to directories in your home directory by default; not sure if that’s still the case, but you can definitely change it.

It's still the case for upstream Wine but not for some distributions. Notably Proton doesn't do that.

Unfortunately, many applications now treat your filesystem as a dumping ground for their dependencies and caches and config files and temporary data and all kinds of other non-userdata trash they create. This ship has long since sailed :(

Wouldn't it be possible to run the game in a container, so it has no access to your home dir?

(I've only used lxc for stuff like WordPress, haven't ever used it for GUI stuff.)

Not sure what you mean with a remake but the "Enhanced Edition" of BG2 has a native Linux version that use XDG-complient configuration paths: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanc...

And for the original under Wine you can configure wine you not do that - or use Proton which doesn't link user directories by default.

I just never look in ~

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