My homedir is an infernal hellhole of junk accumulated over the past 15 years and I wouldn't have it any other way

Multiple people in this topic say they organise in directories for different programming languages, something I have never considered and I find it to be an odd way of organising for some reason I can't explain.

Where do you put a project with a Javascript frontend and a Python backend?

My home folders on any OS have a Development folder (which conveniently sits right next to Documents and Downloads) and in that folder, I’ve also got subfolders per programming language that have the respective projects in them.

The other folder I usually have is SyncThing with whatever synced folders are relevant for that machine.

~/3D Objects

~/Homework (porn)

~/aaaaaaa (porn)

~/Stuff (memes, with a porn subfolder)

~/misc (work docs, study docs, forms, some porn)

At least two of these:
~/Stuff
~/Stuffs
~/Stuffz
~/Shits

• /ram - tmpfs filesystem
• ~/.local/bin - added to my path
• ~/.local/software - any user-local program more complicated than a binary gets a directory here. Generally a binary would be symlinked to ~/.local/bin
• ~/.local/venv - shared python venv to use for one liners and small scripts
• ~/repo - local filesystem backed package repository for which the host system is configured to install from
• ~/.local/repo - local filesystem backed package repository for which the host system is not configured to install from (used for mock, VMs, and external systems).
• /overflow - Used to point to a large secondary hard drive (back when having a small ssd was the economical thing to do. Nowadays, it is just where my large directories go cause I can't be bothered to get used to a more sane setup

I have /home/username/username/ and I sym link important dirs (like Downloads) to my new home. I strongly dislike all the dot files and dirs cluttering up my home dir.

~/proj
~/note
~/sync
~/docs (/book etc)
~/imgs ~/util ~/test ~/temp

Hardware folder (synced via sync thing). All hardware PDFs, notes images etc get subfolders by manufacturer. It is helpful for keeping track of use manuals, firmware or config settings for each piece of hardware.

~/dev for code
~/work for things I don't want to do, like taxes

Archive

Archive archive

Archive_11_2025

I am not good at organizing

~/ linux iso's

I just live out of my downloads folder until its time to back up the important stuff to the server and reinstall/ distrohop.

I always make a bin folder in my home for putting my custom scripts and downloaded binaries. At least on fedora, ~/bin is already in the path, so I don't have to make any additional configuration to make stuff in there become commands for my cli

~/autoclean and a cron job to delete everything older than 7+ days from there. I can just download whatever, throw it in a special folder and it's gone after few days. Keeps my ~/Downloads a bit more clean, easy to store temp txt files to keep track of what I currently have on hand and so on.

~/.drafts, in which my text editor taskbar shortcut script creates files YYMMDD_text_N. I passionately believe in eliminating the chore of manually naming my spur-of-the-moment notes and text files.

~/progs or ~/bin where loose programs not provided by my package manager reside.

If there's a secondary drive, /media/disk1 as the mount point in fstab.

I rsync my home folder across installs. These are my standard extra folders.

~/Books, with subfolders by topic.

~/Comics, with subfolders by publisher, then by title, possibly with an intermediate folder for author or franchise.

~/Programming, with subfolders by language, then project.

~/Projects

~/Projects - for my coding projects

~/Qt - which holds the Qt framework

~/Torrents - For torrents that I share

~/Homework

I usually create ~/git/{github,gitlab,codeberg,AUR,etc} where I clone the git stuff I need.

The rest is usually handled by my nextcloud that creates the ~/Nextcloud folder.

I always make a ~/.local/{bin,opt,share} if the distro lacks it. and a ~/bot that I use for my development stuff

Your organization will vary with your usage. If you're looking for something suitable for work, I would highly recommend the PARA approach. https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/

I've tweaked it to my needs. Combined with fzf, it makes my workflow so smooth and efficient. https://www-gem.codeberg.page/sys_stay_organized/

Projects for all kinds of projects

aur_builds for the package I use from the AUR. No hand holding here, I build and install my AUR packages artisanally.

~/diy for my collection of knitting, crochet and sewing patterns and other assorted diy stuff

~/work duh.

~/tools for my collection of more or less useful small scripts

~/sync for my syncthing folders

~/data symlink to my data partition (most of the others are also symlinks to their location on data)

I don't really have a convention for programming projects yet. They used to land inside of ~/diy or in ~/tools or just random folders on data. I've got a ~/code folder now, but its contents are a mess.

~/Brojetos (anything relating to making stuff, writing, drawing, video creation, programming, etc., professional or personal)

~/temp (a non-hidden temp folder with a script that wipes it when the PC shuts down or reboots, used for downloads and such to prevent the "downloads folder is an abomination" problem that plagues any computer after a while of usage)

~/AppsGames (appimages, applications compiled from source and not installed to system, personal use scripts, wineprefixes, non-steam games)

aaaand ~/OtherAminals (for stuff I want to keep but have no idea where else to place)

I usually make src, junk, and applications for appimages and unpackaged binaries

~/tmp

~/temp

~/temper

~/tempest

~/misc

/mnt/other (symlinked)

I just at ~/projects it contains a boat load of stuff including my Neovim and bash stuff.

Guys, use GNU Stow + git for your configs shit's good.

~/bin/ which I add to my $PATH

I do a similar thing for code stuffs, generally always make a ~/Git and ~/Godot so I always have a spot for things.

I also delete most of the auto-created ones if I'm using a DE that does that, because I have my own organization going on with various external/network drives. Only one I have always kept is ~/Downloads.

For source code or any project - a folder Projects (on my personal setups) or Documents/Projects/PersonalRepo (more customer specific folders under the Projects sub-folder)

• Anything under ~/Projects that isn’t just a throwaway will be a git repo.
• Anything under ~/Documents/Project/*Repo will be a git repo.

~/Repos (For all the github and other code repositories I work in)

~/Scripts (All my random Bash scripts, sometimes for testing out stuff)

~/Junk (Mostly used for testing programs or small project components that aren't mature enough to have their own repo)

Under ~ I usually make ~/Application for flatpaks/appimages etc, ~/Script for any kind of script I write in bash, python, or whatever else, ~/Audio for audio/music production stuff, and ~/Games for emulators and such. ~/Documents is reserved for actual documents containing text data usually.

From back when I used to freelance as a photo and video editor. ~/Media which was a mount point for my second hard drive with all the personal and paid customer's I was working on, it was a mix of Music, Photos and Videos that I was creating, but not consuming if that makes sense.

Just a remnant from back when I had a small SSD with my OS and a second larger mechanical drive for everything else

• ~/Documents/incubator for my personal projects.
• ~/Documents//<user/org>/ for contributing/working on my saved projects
• ~/Documents/schule for school

~/dev

~/dev/oss

~/dev/work

~/dev/personal

• ~/Prototypes for ... my prototypes, typically either starting from an empty directory or cloning a repository and adapting it for my needs. I have this directory on nearly all my devices, desktop of course but also NAS, server, phone, standalone XR headset, etc.
• ~/Apps in addition to ~/bin, typically binaries but all AppImages

~/nixos/ for my NixOS config ~/repos/ for git repos ~/audio/ for my sound library and recordings

~/Transfer

for SyncThing

I have ~/work/code/project-name-1, ~/work/code/project-name-2 or ~/priv/code/project-name-3, but not by language... I only separate work and private repositories.

Conventions I have are:

• Downloads folder is ephemeral, don't store/keep things in there I might want
• ~/scripts - personal scripts and one offs
• ~/Documents/projects/[subdir] - any tech project I may be working on, gets homed here
• /tmp - always mount it noexec

I also start off allocating ~ 50GB to / (root) volumegroup. Wine and proton have been taking up nearly the full space though, may need to expand it on my desktop soon.