Thank you so much for this! You’ve given me a lot of ideas. Last question, I think you mentioned symlinking – can you say more about how you are using symlinks? (I am familiar with the concept but maybe haven’t used them how you have for a purpose like this)
I havan’t yet used a lot of symlinking, but some of the stuff I do is:
If you can see the dirlist, in ~/root/Imports-Exports/Bottles I have the bottles dir which contains 2 subdirs, Bottles-Apps and Bottles-Games. They are symlinks, pointing to bottles of apps (at ~/root/Software/Applications/Linux/Bottles-Apps) and games (at ~/root/Games/Video/Computer/linux/Bottles-Games) respectively (bottles are wine prefixes that the app “Bottles” creates to run windows programs).
This one is again about windows games. I have the program files and data in 2 separate folder under ~/root/Games/Video/Computer/windows/GameX (where GameX represents a given game) and I symlink them inside the respective bottle dirs (2 of the games I have use the default Documents dir for saving the game data and because I dont have bottles isolated from the rest of the userspace, I symlinked the game data in ~/Documents).
Because nixos uses symlinks for its app shortcuts, simply dragging app icons on the desktop doesnt work (it creates symlinks to the version of the app at this time). Thus, I have to go to nixos’s folder with shortcuts to my apps (which gets updated after update) and symlink each shortcut to my desktop.
Another use for symlinks is to keep my dotfiles git versioned and sycned with codeberg, for which I’ll have to use gnu stow, but I still haven’t done this (my git knowledges are veery limited).
You can do fun stuff, just be careful when copying/deleting/syncing symlinks, not to mess up anything (app tend to warn you if you want to follow the symlink (which affects the targeted file instead of the symlink) or not). They help to keep things tidy, but can get messy with improper use:)
Gotcha. Yeah I saw those -> indicators right after sending you that question. I just installed tree locally – it is nice! I keep forgetting about that one. I’m gonna take all this as inspiration and come up with a better system. I currently have a server/desktop with my whole entire data archive and a laptop that will have some backup-worthy files, I’d like to be able to easily back them both up locally and to the cloud.
I think getting better organized like you did first is the right move. I have a system in place for the desktop machine that works fairly well, but buying this new laptop threw a wrench into that system because I’d like to reuse it in both contexts but it’s currently not equipped to do that. I’ll figure it out :) But like you said, being organized helps efforts like that (among many others!)
Thank you so much for this! You’ve given me a lot of ideas. Last question, I think you mentioned symlinking – can you say more about how you are using symlinks? (I am familiar with the concept but maybe haven’t used them how you have for a purpose like this)
Hehe, glad I helped:)
I havan’t yet used a lot of symlinking, but some of the stuff I do is:
If you can see the dirlist, in
~/root/Imports-Exports/BottlesI have the bottles dir which contains 2 subdirs,Bottles-AppsandBottles-Games. They are symlinks, pointing to bottles of apps (at~/root/Software/Applications/Linux/Bottles-Apps) and games (at~/root/Games/Video/Computer/linux/Bottles-Games) respectively (bottles are wine prefixes that the app “Bottles” creates to run windows programs).This one is again about windows games. I have the program files and data in 2 separate folder under
~/root/Games/Video/Computer/windows/GameX(whereGameXrepresents a given game) and I symlink them inside the respective bottle dirs (2 of the games I have use the defaultDocumentsdir for saving the game data and because I dont have bottles isolated from the rest of the userspace, I symlinked the game data in~/Documents).Because nixos uses symlinks for its app shortcuts, simply dragging app icons on the desktop doesnt work (it creates symlinks to the version of the app at this time). Thus, I have to go to nixos’s folder with shortcuts to my apps (which gets updated after update) and symlink each shortcut to my desktop.
Another use for symlinks is to keep my dotfiles git versioned and sycned with codeberg, for which I’ll have to use gnu stow, but I still haven’t done this (my git knowledges are veery limited).
You can do fun stuff, just be careful when copying/deleting/syncing symlinks, not to mess up anything (app tend to warn you if you want to follow the symlink (which affects the targeted file instead of the symlink) or not). They help to keep things tidy, but can get messy with improper use:)
Gotcha. Yeah I saw those
->indicators right after sending you that question. I just installedtreelocally – it is nice! I keep forgetting about that one. I’m gonna take all this as inspiration and come up with a better system. I currently have a server/desktop with my whole entire data archive and a laptop that will have some backup-worthy files, I’d like to be able to easily back them both up locally and to the cloud.I think getting better organized like you did first is the right move. I have a system in place for the desktop machine that works fairly well, but buying this new laptop threw a wrench into that system because I’d like to reuse it in both contexts but it’s currently not equipped to do that. I’ll figure it out :) But like you said, being organized helps efforts like that (among many others!)
Haha it’s in my plans to build a server/nas to have a local “cloud” (and try some self hosted programs)
Aw, I see, good luck with your endeavor!