I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can’t tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.
@araquen @TheBaldness This only makes sense when the ratio of computers to users is exactly one. If more than one person uses the same computer, you don’t want person A’s favourite settings interfering with person B. On the flip side, a person who uses more than one computer wants to easily bring their settings with them from one computer to the next. The bits that personalise the experience should be stored in the person’s personal space.
There is no good answer. Put the configs in the app’s location, now every ordinary user needs write access to where programs are stored, just to store their preferences. Virus-writer’s paradise. Put them in the personal folders and now you have all this cruft and crap leftover from programs long since forgotten and uninstalled. It’s neither sloppy note careless. It’s a hard problem that doesn’t have a simple elegant answer that’s perfect for everyone.