Solved: Re: What is creating directories under my home directory?

[Curt Howland <Howland@priss.com>]

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On Saturday 27 September 2025, Curt Howland was heard to say:
> My main system doesn't have this problem, I have no idea what I did
> right with that one.

Found it.

If the entry is commented out in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs it gets 
recreated automagically.

#XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"

becomes 

XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"

However, if the entry in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs is like this:

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

the directories are not created, since ~/ already exists.

On prior machines I had been copying the .config directory in its 
entirety, something I did not want to do again because cruft builds 
up.

Many thanks, Mr. Heller, hopefully this will help some folks who find 
themselves having to create empty files to stop the directories being 
created.

Curt-

- -- 
You may my glories and my state dispose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
 --- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

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