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Yes, sticking everything into `$HOME/.toolname` is what most cross-platform software is doing, and I imagine that's just fine for the vast majority of users.


Short, memorable passwords like one's birthday or favourite pet's name are "just fine for the vast majority of users". It's a meaningless metric of quality - or more to the point - it isn't a metric of quality.


Weak passwords have securities downside.

I struggle to see what the issue is with ~/.programName ?


1. It doesn't separate program's config, data, and cache; so it is impossible to backup excluding cache, impossible to reset your config without data-loss.

2. It assumes home is infinite, if you are running out of space in home you can't move program files to other partitions. E.G. Flatpack hardcodes its apps data in `~/.var` so if you have a small/almost-full home partition you simply can't install certain Flatpacks.


First and foremost, that I don't get to decide where things go on my own machine, and that if I do regardless, because developers didn't follow a simple standard and instead decided to hardcode things that shouldn't be hardcoded - which is just about the first thing every dev is taught not to do - things will break.

You may not find it important but is it an issue or not?


Your lack of imagination is not a compelling argument.


Except it isn't most cross-plaform software doing that. It might be most of the cross-platform software you use but IME it's mostly it's corporate software plus a few holdouts too stubborn to add two lines to the code reading their config file.




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