Part of what's making learning Linux so difficult for me, is the idea of how fragmented it is. You can install programs with sudo apt get (program). You can get programs with snaps. You can get programs with flatpaks. You can install with tar.gz files. You can install with .deb files. You can get programs with .sh files. There's probably more I don't know about.
I don't even know where all these programs are being installed. I haven't learned how to uninstall them yet. And I'm sure that each way has a different way to uninstall too.
So that brings me to my main question. Why not consolidate all this? Sure, files CAN be installed anywhere if you want, but why not make a folder like /home/programs/ where it's assumed that programs would be installed?
On windows the programs can be installed anywhere, but the default is C:/windows/Program Files x86/ or something like that. Now, you can change it all you want when you install the programs. I could install it to C:/Fuckfuckfuck/ if I wanted to. I don't want to, so I leave it alone because C:/Windows/Program Files x86/ is where it's assumed all the files are.
Furthermore, I see no benefit to installing 15 different programs in 7 different folders. I begrudgingly understand why there's so many different installation methods, but I do NOT understand why as a collective community we can't have something like a standardized setting in each distro that you can set 1 place for all your installation files.
Because of the fragmentation of distros, I can understand why we can't have a standardized location across all distros like Windows has. However I DON'T see why we can't have a setting that gets set upon each first boot after installation that tells each future installation which folder to install to.
I would personally pick /Home/Programs/, but maybe you want /root/Jamies Files/ because you're Jamie, and those are your files.
In either case, as we boot up during the install, it would ask us where we want our program files installed. And from then on, no matter what method of install you chose, it would default to whatever your chosen folder was.
Now, you could still install other places too, but you would need to direct that on a per install basis.
So what's the benefit of having programs each installed in seperate locations that are wildly different?
Windows certainly doesnt have uniformity.
Where are my game saves located?
Are they in my hidden AppData folder? If so, which of the three subdirectories does it live?
If not there, then surly it's in the Saved Games folder.
Nope. It must be in My Documents.
Shit... Maybe in the Program Files?
For fuck sake, where is it?!
Web browser > search > pcgamingwiki (great resource BTW), save game location. AH-HA! IT'S IN... My Documents?
I just checked there! (Half an hour passes)
Found it! Now why the FUCK does Windows partition the local user directory from the OneDrive user directory?!
Windows is a FUCKING mess. Once you get used to Linux, you'll understand the worst thing is Mozilla thinks it's okay to put its config file one directory up from where it should be.
@Zozano @Lost_My_Mind
seriously, I have been gaming for more than 30 years and if you want me to swear I'll swear, for 25 years I have been gaming pirated games, on the V1.0.0 of a random game, the save file is located on My Documents\My Saved Files, then after installing the update 1.1.0 the saved progress is gone, after much research, I find it under my docs\the game name, then after 1.2.0, I find it under App Data\local... and so on and every time the pseudo changes+ the path
You forgot to swear.
@Zozano @Lost_My_Mind so I lose much much time researching and since they were pirated games, support was poor so I even searched the dark web (not the dark dark web but I call the dark web the 3rd+ page of google)
Sounds like you need to bookmark pcgamingwiki ;)