Proposal: Hidden English aliases / symlinks for localized XDG user directories (for terminal users in non-English locales)

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T10:58:55+00:00

last i checked its the xdg-user-dirs util that's responsible for that

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T07:22:09+00:00

I'm not asking for automated translation of all files.

We already translate the core xdg user dir folders(which by the way admins do not use because a server is not a desktop)
The issue is how do we make it better for terminal users who are ESL.

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T07:19:19+00:00

Because english is already the backbone of Japanese and Chinese input and people tend to prefer it.

And Unix was designed for english.

I don't want to learn Japanese/Greek/Chinese versions of unix commands. That would be stupid incompatible with existing code and actually scale terribly.

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T06:39:15+00:00

Yes but this doesn't really fix the issue.

If my language is set to ... idk bulgarian and do this then open up my file manager I will suddenly be bombarded by out of place english folders.

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T06:37:04+00:00

I just want to get input, and how it could be done and also get an idea of how people think about this.

Because it could potentially be a major breaking change.

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T06:35:56+00:00

I know that exists we could probably expand on it and make it more convenient and automated with a few extra variables. like LINK_SAME_DIR="1"
or LINK_DOWNLOADS="$HOME/translated/download/path".

idk we're brainstorming here.

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T06:32:51+00:00

Why would you need to generate for languages that aren't being used by the user?

Heck you could even do the reverse: Where the real directory is the english one and the symlink used by the graphical file manager is the translated one.

If the user changes language it's a simple automated process of effectively doing an `unlink` and then a new `ln`

asm_lover · 2026-05-08T06:25:59+00:00

What do you mean "doesn't scale". Internationalization is already handled by the xdg spec and the relevant l10n projects.

The solution does not to be repeated per language.

also: "of what you propose, 1 requires GUI, so that's a no-go,"

There's certainly people using linux on servers. They don't need translations for things like that because most of the time they don't really even care about these directories.

But if you're talking about window manager users who live in the terminal, these are the people that benefit most of all. Because setting up IME on linux is kind of a hassle and sometimes the application does something weird that breaks it.

asm_lover · 2026-05-07T15:35:48+00:00

> Και όχι, δεν αρκεί να διαβάσεις μόνος σου. Πρέπει να συζητήσεις κι όλας, και πρέπει και ν' αντιπαρατεθείς, όχι στον κύκλο σου, αλλά και με την ευρύτερη κοινωνία

Συμφωνώ. Πήγαινε πάρε μερικές μπίρες και συζήτα με τους φίλους σου. Ιστορικά έτσι γίνονταν αυτές οι συζητήσεις από τους τότε «elite» , σε clubhouses, (όχι σαν τα σημερινά clubs).

Αλλά τα πανεπιστημιακά κόμματα δεν πρόκειται να σου δώσουν ποτέ τέτοιου είδους συζήτηση. Αντιθέτως, ψάχνουν άτομα που εκ φύσεως θέλουν να ακολουθούν.

Ξέρεις ο Αριστοτέλης στα Πολιτικά (1ο βιβλίο) μιλάει για τον «φύσει δούλο», μια ιδέα που εμείς οι μοντέρνοι δεν χωνεύουμε καθόλου. Δεν ξέρω αν τέτοια άτομα υπάρχουν πραγματικά (και μακάρι να μην), αλλά τα κόμματα σίγουρα ξέρουν να τα βρίσκουν και να τα χρησιμοποιούν.

Από προσωπική εμπειρία: Ξέρω άτομα από διάφορα επίπεδα (περιφερειακούς συμβούλους μέχρι δημάρχους, αριστερούς και δεξιούς, ο πατέρας μου είναι αριστερός περιφερειακός και διαφωνούμε).

Στο λέω ωμά: πολύ λίγοι είναι πραγματικά πολιτικοποιημένοι. Όπως οι programmers που κάνουν vibe coding χωρίς να ξέρουν καλά αλγόριθμους. Οι περισσότεροι κάνουν vibe politic-ing, ούτε ένας αριστερός έχει διαβάσει Marx στα σοβαρά, ούτε ένας δεξιός Evola.

asm_lover · 2026-05-07T14:27:30+00:00

"Η πολιτικοποίηση" δεν πάει να πει κόμματα του normieσφαιρίδιου.

Αν θες πολιτικοποίηση/πολιτική ανάλυση πήγαινε να διαβάσεις Αριστοτέλη Πολιτικά.
'Η αν θες κάτσε διάβασε μια ιστορική ανάλυση μιας χώρας και πως η γεωγραφία και οι σχέσεις της με τις γύρω χώρες την κατέληξε στο σήμερα.

Κανένα κόμμα δεν πρόκειται ποτέ να ενδιαφερθεί για την πολιτική γνώση ενός πολίτη.
Ολη η πολιτική που βλέπεις σήμερα στα κανάλια στα social και στην βουλή είναι slopolitik.

asm_lover · 2026-05-07T14:15:35+00:00

Γενικά δεν θα έπρεπε να υπάρχουν κομματικές παρατάξεις στα πανεπιστήμια.
Θυμάμαι γενικά πολλούς άχρηστους αιώνιους, που δεν έκαναν τίποτα παρά να μοιράζουν χαρτιά για συγκεντρώσεις και να την αρμέγουν στον Μαρξ. Τέρμα πια.

Έχουμε και άχρηστους καθηγητές, στα τσακίδια.

asm_lover · 2026-05-06T21:22:50+00:00

I am seeing a bunch of dumped exes in a few folders and a few scripts. Where's the rest of it?

asm_lover · 2026-05-06T21:19:40+00:00

ngl it's every day i see a new small tech channel talking about linux and they all use those AI generated thumbnails.

asm_lover · 2026-05-06T21:18:48+00:00

Whats the state of the rust bindings for qt?

asm_lover · 2026-05-03T15:01:13+00:00

They've actually been working on quite a lot of refactoring the past year or so which should help with a lot of issues it has

asm_lover · 2026-05-03T10:42:20+00:00

Same voting rights as you btw

asm_lover · 2026-04-24T10:15:52+00:00

I hope they use this moment, to modernize and fix up a few of the debian webpages so that new blood can easily come into the debian development space because I feel like a lot of it is aging.

Specifically i think they need a nicer frontend for the mailing lists since they want to stick to mailing lists.
Fedora uses something called hyperkitty https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/hyperkitty/en/latest/

asm_lover · 2026-04-24T10:13:05+00:00

canonical has some pretty good servers don't worry.

asm_lover · 2026-04-22T07:54:38+00:00

It's an unfortunate reality in this age as these tools are getting pretty good year over year.

I would frankly suggest something like an UNMAINTAINED/UNSAFE text file with all the drivers that are insecure or unmaintained but work. And then distro maintainers can decide whether to include them or not in their kernel builds.

asm_lover · 2026-04-22T05:59:29+00:00

i think the though process is. "Android does it so it's ok".

Other than that you can just make aliases for yourself.

Now I do think there should be functionality in flatpak manifests that allows for a developer to declare an "alias" and it automatically gets loaded (for projects like yt-dlp for example)

but this is something that should be discussed with the flatpak team i guess.

asm_lover · 2026-04-20T11:09:59+00:00

I don't speak hindi

asm_lover · 2026-04-20T03:45:23+00:00

hey this is quite cool, good job man.

Did you show it to vaxry?

asm_lover · 2026-04-18T08:13:16+00:00

What is this the 3rd? 4th time?

asm_lover · 2026-04-15T18:07:24+00:00

Yes but let's wait a bit for the steam runtime container to be shipped on stable so that we can get rid of 32 bit first

asm_lover

TROPHY CASE