Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

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brwno

Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by brwno » 2017-09-10, 16:07

Problem: PM (on Archlinux) creates a ~/Desktop directory/folder every time that it is started.

More info:
1. It also used to create a ~/Downloads folder, but that was fixed by changing somethings in 'about:config'.
2. I don't see anything in 'Preferences' nor in 'about:config' that could fix it.
3. I am not using the portable version.
4. I tried with all addons disabled.

lightning slinger

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by lightning slinger » 2017-09-10, 16:54

Not in my Arch Linux it doesn't!
Perhaps you can tell us how you installed PM, manually from tar.bz2, pminstaller.sh or palemoon or palemoon-bin from the AUR?

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adesh
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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by adesh » 2017-09-10, 17:14

Maybe Pale Moon thinks ~/Desktop is the download directory. Search about:config for "Desktop" to find any references and reset/modify the preferences to your liking.

brwno

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by brwno » 2017-09-10, 18:24

1. I installed PM from the AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/palemoon-bin/). [PS: Correction: It was 'https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/palemoon/'.]

2. Neither 'browser.download.dir' nor 'browser.download.lastDir' point to '~/Desktop' and I couldn't find anything else in 'about:config' that did. (Also checked the 'Preferences' for the default download folder and even searched for 'Desktop' in the 'prefs.js' file in the profile folder with no results.)

lightning slinger

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by lightning slinger » 2017-09-10, 19:02

brwno wrote:....
2. Neither 'browser.download.dir' nor 'browser.download.lastDir' point to '~/Desktop' and I couldn't find anything else in 'about:config' that did. (Also checked the 'Preferences' for the default download folder....
Strange, I don't have browser.download.dir in my about:config which was installed with pminstaller.sh together with a new profile when PM27 was released!

Perhaps time to backup your existing profile and try a new profile for test purposes.

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by trava90 » 2017-09-10, 23:35

Let me remind everyone that most of the builds from the AUR do not use recommended configurations, will differ from our official builds (including potential stability issues, bugs, etc.), and are not recommended for use.

I'm unable to reproduce on Manjaro or Mint using the official builds.

brwno

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by brwno » 2017-09-11, 01:29

1. Created a new profile, but it also generates a ~/Desktop directory.

(Indeed, the new profile does not have the 'browser.download.dir' and 'browser.download.lastDir' preferences, which I presume were created by an addon. However, in the old profile, the value of such preferences was not '~/Desktop'.)

2. Reinstalled PM: didn't work.

3. Will try other things.

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by ron_1 » 2017-09-11, 20:22

brwno wrote:
2. Reinstalled PM: didn't work
How? By using the official build as suggested by trava90?

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by distantpluto » 2017-09-12, 15:25

I've been building from the AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/palemoon/) for a while and never suffered any problem. I don't have any directories created under home apart from the profile directory and where I've specifically pointed downloads to.
trava90 wrote:Let me remind everyone that most of the builds from the AUR do not use recommended configurations, will differ from our official builds (including potential stability issues, bugs, etc.), and are not recommended for use.
I'm genuinely curious in which way they differ and what stability issues and bugs they suffer from?
Pale Moon and Epyrus on Arch Linux.

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by trava90 » 2017-09-12, 22:05

distantpluto wrote:I'm genuinely curious in which way they differ and what stability issues and bugs they suffer from?
In short the majority of the AUR maintainers have been let's say, "less than enthusiastic" (and in some cases even hateful) about using sane mozconfig/build environment settings per my suggestions. These differences range from unsupported/untested build options, using compilers known to cause crashes, experimental/potentially unsafe compiler flags and optimizations, etc. As such, we cannot recommend or really provide support for AUR builds.

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by distantpluto » 2017-09-13, 11:45

trava90 wrote:In short the majority of the AUR maintainers have been let's say, "less than enthusiastic" (and in some cases even hateful) about using sane mozconfig/build environment settings per my suggestions. These differences range from unsupported/untested build options, using compilers known to cause crashes, experimental/potentially unsafe compiler flags and optimizations, etc. As such, we cannot recommend or really provide support for AUR builds.
I wasn't aware of any of this as I have only used the one AUR package I mentioned previously and the maintainer (WorMzy) appears to be have implemented all requests from upstream, from what I can tell. WorMzy also maintains 'palemoon-bin', which my wife uses, so I can't imagine any problems there either, it's a very simple package. Personally, I've had zero problems related to using Pale Moon from either.

Anyway, there is no way I would expect you to recommend or support any AUR builds anyway, Arch users accept the risks of using such packages!

Many thanks for all your hard work (everyone involved), I'd be lost without this browser :) And apologies for the off-topic.
Pale Moon and Epyrus on Arch Linux.

brwno

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by brwno » 2017-09-15, 01:37

(Took me long to reply; sorry.)

Yes, I did use an official build. I just now:

1. Uninstalled the AUR Palemoon ('sudo pacman -Rs palemoon');
2. Donwloaded the tarball at <http://linux.palemoon.org/download/mainline/> (x64);
3. Extracted it with 'tar xjz palemoon-27.4.2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2';
4. Ran it with '$ ./palemoon --safe-mode --no-remote -P'; and, finally,
5. Created a new profile.

And it still creates the ~/Desktop directory.

So:

1. Perhaps I am at fault, since I am a noob Linux user (just a few months); or
2. Some feature of my specific Linux configuration leads Palemoon to create the folder. (In this regard, I have no desktop environment or any such thing installed; only i3, started from '.xinitrc'. Could this "plebeian" configuration have triggered the strange behavior of Palemoon?)

(Incidentally, for what it is worth, I would say, with distantpluto, that I too never experienced problems with the AUR Palemoon.)

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by dinosaur » 2017-09-18, 23:39

I saw the same thing happening in Mandriva and forks (Rosa, PCLinuxOS...).

I solved it by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and removing all the silly Windows-like directory names there, to read:

Code: Select all

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by gracious1 » 2017-09-19, 08:44

dinosaur wrote:I solved it by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and removing all the silly Windows-like directory names there
Hmm... :think: XDG refers to the organization formerly known as X Desktop Group, now called Freedesktop.org. It has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows; it's about X Windows. It's using Unix (& GNU/Linux) naming conventions for variables. It is situating all these directories in your home directory. ($HOME).
brwno wrote:2. Some feature of my specific Linux configuration leads Palemoon to create the folder. (In this regard, I have no desktop environment or any such thing installed; only i3, started from '.xinitrc'. Could this "plebeian" configuration have triggered the strange behavior of Palemoon?)
So since this involves XDG I think that yes, there is a relation between the lack of a desktop environment and the creation of these directories, since Freedesktop.org develops or facilitates development of software for desktop environments.

The file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update. Rather than delete those directories, however, I think you should just change them:

Code: Select all

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"
This is how they look in my user-dirs.dirs file. By just having them set to "$HOME/" (which is a curious setting), xdg-user-dirs is creating new directories, I'm guessing. But generally xdg-user-dirs runs at login, so why it would run at the execution of Pale Moon I am not sure.

Or, okay, so you don't want any kind of ~/Downloads or ~/Pictures or whatever? If you really want to, you can disable this altogether. But don't delete the directory entries! Try this instead:

Code: Select all

echo "enabled=False" | tee -a ~/.config/user-dirs.conf
Whew! Hope this helps. :mrgreen:
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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by dinosaur » 2017-09-19, 15:30

gracious1 wrote:
dinosaur wrote:I solved it by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and removing all the silly Windows-like directory names there
Hmm... :think: XDG refers to the organization formerly known as X Desktop Group, now called Freedesktop.org. It has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows; it's about X Windows. It's using Unix (& GNU/Linux) naming conventions for variables. It is situating all these directories in your home directory. ($HOME).
I wrote Windows-like (I never said it was Windows, but it was certainly done to look like it). I've been using Linux (and before that, Xenix) for decades, so please, don't take me for a noob...
Yes, this is a Windows-like way to try and impose a directory structure and sub-directory names in a user directory. I hate this, and just like the initiator of this thread did (please re-read their message), I deleted all those silly directories and do not want them to come back ever !
So since this involves XDG I think that yes, there is a relation between the lack of a desktop environment and the creation of these directories, since Freedesktop.org develops or facilitates development of software for desktop environments.

The file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update. Rather than delete those directories, however, I think you should just change them:
.../...
NO !!! If you change them back to what you advise, the directories will be re-created ! Instead, doing l like I wrote, those directories will never, ever be re-created by XDG (since all the environment variables point to the user directory instead, which does exist).
Or, okay, so you don't want any kind of ~/Downloads or ~/Pictures or whatever? If you really want to, you can disable this altogether. But don't delete the directory entries! Try this instead:

Code: Select all

echo "enabled=False" | tee -a ~/.config/user-dirs.conf
In my experience (with Gnome 2 and Mate v1.14, at least) , this setting is insufficient to prevent the re-creation of the directories (also, it seems specific to some distros, since it controls the behaviour of a 'xdg-user-dirs-update' command, which I don't have in the distros I am using).

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by distantpluto » 2017-09-20, 18:27

dinosaur wrote:I solved it by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and removing all the silly Windows-like directory names there...[snip][/code]
I'm totally with you on that one. I edited my ~/.config/users-dirs.dirs to this a long time ago...

Code: Select all

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/temp/xdg_dirs_dump"
'xdg_dirs_dump' is of course just a directory i created where this crap gets contained ;)
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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by 0strodamus » 2017-09-23, 01:26

If xdg-user-dirs is causing such angst, why not just uninstall it?

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by distantpluto » 2017-09-23, 13:42

0strodamus wrote:If xdg-user-dirs is causing such angst, why not just uninstall it?
Fair point but where will crud be put if these directories don't exist? I couldn't find an answer to that one.

I've found stuff in my "dump" directory before now and I'd rather it be in there contained than loose in $HOME.
Pale Moon and Epyrus on Arch Linux.

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Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by dinosaur » 2017-09-23, 22:42

0strodamus wrote:If xdg-user-dirs is causing such angst, why not just uninstall it?
Because it would break dependencies for other packages and some software depend on it...

brwno

Re: Palemoon creates a ~/Desktop directory when started

Unread post by brwno » 2017-09-25, 17:28

Problem solved. Had to install 'xdg-user-dirs', then did '$ xdg-user-dirs-update --set DESKTOP ~/not/homedir/Desktop'. Thanks.

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