Why is it so hard to find a file in Ubuntu? (2011)

38 点作者 ukz超过 9 年前

17 条评论

zanny超过 9 年前

The only criticism I could have of Linux filesystems is that user mounted devices show up in /run?/media/<user>/<device> rather than ~/media/<device>. Otherwise everything a user does or makes is showing up under ~ somewhere, and the superuser's stuff resides in a mix of /etc, /root, and /usr.Well, I'll take that back, the fact the config folder is hidden by default is also kind of sucky, and the habit of some software putting configuration data in ~/.local/share and some applications putting non-config data in ~/.config is extremely annoying but should be solved on a per-application basis.Just a few offenders on my desktop in config:* Chrome/ium stores extensions in .config rather than share. Those take up 600MB each in my config folder on my system.* Qupzilla has a profile network cache of 32MB in config.* Brackets has 14MB of cache data in config.* Clementine puts its indexing databases in config.* Spideroak puts everything in config - its index database and snapshots.I'm not as familiar with offenders putting configurations into share, but I know at least KDE's kscreen puts monitor layouts in share/kscreen when they belong in config/kscreen.I'd like to see Ubuntu, Arch, or Fedora (the big distros with the market share to push for best practices) enforce disk quotas on config directories - ie, a program cannot use more than 5MB of space there, akin to localstorage's limit and the intent to use it as a config store rather than persistent data store which is what indexdb / share are.Also, .config should just be config. No dot. Users need to configure their stuff, they should be able to see it.

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AdmiralAsshat超过 9 年前

Coming from a Windows background, I can understand the initial learning curve in getting used to the Linux filesystem. I still don't quite grasp it all myself.With that said, who the hell goes looking for stuff in C:\Program Files? The exe's live there, but most Windows programs create shortcuts on the Desktop/Start Menu, so you're rarely going to go into the program's directory itself unless you need to modify a .INI file.

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qwertyuiop924超过 9 年前

Ubuntu actually does make it hard to find files. Is it in /usr/bin? /usr/local/bin? /bin? /sbin? /etc/bin? /opt? /god-knows-what-directory?Honestly, on linux, there should be /usr/local/bin, which is never touched by system management, for source installations, /sbin for emergency recovery tools, and /usr/bin for EVERYTHING ELSE. This is pretty much the only thing that fdo got right.

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cpplinuxdude超过 9 年前

Interesting. I think the posts contains a lot of useful information, however I believe this kind of response is detrimental toward user acquisition.It's very much akin to the tech guy walking into a sale's person's office, to fix their immediate need. The tech guy is thinking all he has to do is teach the person to think for themselves, problem solved. All the sales guy is thinking is is "oh god, please don't teach me anything".Personally I find locate and slocate very useful in linux to find the files I am after. Going over these might be more useful. That or whatever third party tools are available, with a UI and good UX, to achieve a similar goal.

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jrcii超过 9 年前

I would pose a more general question, why is it so hard to find a file in Linux? Across all distributions I've found in difficult to predict where a particular binary or configuration file will be, and this is one of the reasons I prefer BSD (NetBSD in my case) -- the file system feels much more organized and the locations are predictable.

Mikeb85超过 9 年前

Dunno, I personally think Linux has a much more organized and common-sense file structure than Windows. The home folder keeps most user data in a nice, organized place, and generally programs installed from the repos are in a consistent place. Sometimes 'installers' put programs in strange places, but that's the price of freedom I guess...

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angdis超过 9 年前

I think the underlying problem here is the expectation that you, the user, should be able to find stuff by looking "in" particular places. This is perfectly reasonable if you're dealing with a fairly limited set of files or executables, but that era has been slipping away for the last 5 years or more.It is no surprise that the question comes from 2011. I believe that was near when Unity came out and Ubuntu did away with mouse menus to find "Programs" in favor of just searching for what you have. A lot of folks did not like it at first but I think its no longer an issue.

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chriswarbo超过 9 年前

The major difference between Program Files and, say, /usr, is that the former is split up according to "which program it belongs to" and the latter according to "what kind of file it is". Each scheme has its merits, and both are quite fuzzy ("is this helper a part of my program, or standalone?" "should this asset go in 'share' or 'lib'?").Interestingly, the /nix/store directory on NixOS is split according to package, so acts rather like Program Files. However, I try to keep my browsing of /nix/store to a minimum, since it currently contains ~25000 top-level directories. Search (eg. wildcard paths) is still necessary, even with this level of categorisation!

BuckRogers超过 9 年前

Usually I install packages wherever they go by default but if installing by hand I put it in the home folder and run it from there. Most programs are under /usr though, but it's true you never know.I had to give up on Linux as a daily driver due to my fairly complex (multimouse, multimonitor) desktop setup. I suspect that some of the X11 code hasn't been touched in 20 years. This is why OSX and Windows make sense. For the user in the OP, the $100 or so dollars may be money well spent if that works for him. After much hacking I figured it's not equipped to handle my setup but I use it as my development platform and server both servers via SSH.

pvaldes超过 9 年前

Is just that you are not using your OS correctly. Learn a few commands of bash and you'll never look back.... Or just create a link in your desktop pointing to the desired file or dir. Is ironic to say that files are hard to find in the first SO that allowed you to have as many soft and hard links to a file in your desktop as you want.... Or browse the files in your file manager. In many cases you can even have thumbnails to help you finding the photos or videos that you want.... Or just open firefox, write "file:///home/my-user-name" and browse your files. when "my-user-name" is the real name of your user... Or use the main menu in your desktop... Or use emacs dired and tumme

melted超过 9 年前

The "problem" is much more prevalent than people think. Switchers come from Windows to Mac and expect it to function exactly like Windows. When it turns out Mac has its own ways of doing things, they're disappointed. It doesn't matter that quite often the "Mac" way of doing things is actually better or at least more consistent, they just expect it to be exactly like Windows. Well, guess what, folks, you can "drill with a saw and saw with a drill", but you shouldn't expect a good user experience unless you use the tools the way they are meant to be used.

asdf13超过 9 年前

Read the first chapter based on linux in 'Counter Hack reloaded' by Ed Skoudis. yes the book is focused on security however after reading it I found the file system in linux makes far more logical sense to me than windows.from a big picture perspective. <a href="http://www.ubuntugeek.com/linux-or-ubuntu-directory-structure.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ubuntugeek.com/linux-or-ubuntu-directory-structur...</a> (taken from the article)on a side note I added links from that page that are usefulmy own .02 cents is: >updatedb>locate xyz.xyz

auvrw超过 9 年前

<pre><code> which <executable> dpkg -L <package> </code></pre> will find anything that's in program files.i think this is a really good post, though, b/c it demonstrates something that happens when we use engineered things on all levels: "different" is (perhaps falsely) equated with "difficult."i suppose it would be possible to make a package that uses FUSE or something to provide a /prog_files with a similar directory structure to what a windows user would expect, but... nah : )

agumonkey超过 9 年前

It wasn't easier under Windows. Either the badly configured indexed search or the hard to find, slow tree walk. It's gotten usable by win10 I think.

imh超过 9 年前

I wish I'd seen something like this when I first started using ubuntu. As with most things linux, it's very sensible if you know what to look for (which is the hard part).

fnordfnordfnord超过 9 年前

I don't agree that it is so much easier to find a file on Windows, but yeah searching for files on Linux could be a lot more user (or new user) friendly.

draw_down超过 9 年前

The answers to this are condescending and terrible.

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