[diffeomorphism]

Weird windows centric view.

There shouldn't even be a question where to put things much less a "wherever you want". Instead you want a sane, sensible standard.

[wongarsu]

Configuration should go in a defined place. /etc and ~/.config on linux, registry and %appdata% on Windows. A common location makes management, synchronization and backups easier, and space is rarely a concern for configs. Cache directories should go in a defined place. /var/ and ~/.cache on linux, %localappdata% on Windows.

But application files have a huge size range depending on the assets the program needs (typical sizes range from the tens of MB to the tens of GB, with large outliers in either direction). I have multiple tiers of storage (a terabyte of SSD, multiple TB of HDD, tens of TB of network storage) and allocate my software to the desired storage tier depending on my needs

And this isn't just a thing on Windows, Android does the same by allowing you to moving apps to the SD card, provided you have one. Management is just greatly simplified in that case because you have at most two meaningful storage locations on an Android location, while desktop or laptop might have any number of them

[JohnFen]

I would love a sane, sensible standard.

But I also want to be able to decide to not adhere to that standard when it gets in the way. It's my machine, there's no reason why I can't make these decisions myself.

[gruez]

You mean how on linux "make install" just installs to whatever directory (/usr/bin/, /usr/local/bin/, /opt/?), and if you want to change it you have to do ./configure --prefix=whatever?

[zahlman]

I would say that "expect the computer to decide for me", rather than having control over where the files are, is the Windows-centric view.

[munchlax]

There exists makefiles that don't allow DESTDIR, as in

  mkdir derp
  gmake install DESTDIR=$PWD/derp

Distribution maintainers have to patch this :(

[zahlman]

I'm accustomed to setting this up with `./configure --prefix`.

[IAmBroom]

> Weird windows centric view.

What a surprise, an anti-Windows snob comment. "I dislike 75% of the world's OS choice, so let's pretend it doesn't exist."