Giving up control bit by bit

Meanwhile Windows; Hi, you saved a file earlier? Let's search for it. Nope, can't find it, do you want to search Bing? No? [A few minutes later] Ooo, so sorry you're offline and can't download it. Too bad.

Ios; you want to open the file in an app? OK, click 7 buttons and we'll make a local copy stored in the app's specific folder you didn't know existed.

Chrome; what's a file?

Linux; which file browser would you like to use today?

Windows is more like, oh that file you saved earlier? Yeah we moved that to OneDrive. You want it back? Sorry didn't pay your OneDrive subscription fee, so you don't actually have that file anymore. Hope it wasn't something irreplaceable like your kid's baby photos or anything lol.
- I use Windows and have never encountered what you are describing.
  none of my files have ever been 'moved' to OneDrive and none of my files that are on OneDrive have ever been locked behind a paywall.
- You are just making shit up 🤣
  Just pathetic stuff, missing up stories to simp for an OS.
Linux:
ls
cd directory
ls
cd directory2
ls
cd directory3 ...
- On linux you don't search, you find
- Oh boy do I have a tree to sell you

dont forget on some phones OS, you can actually pick and choose the download location. After you downloaded though, the files arent there....

Had to question my sanity many times....

I thought I was losing it because this app wanted to save things to a "downloads" folder. Only to find out it saves it in something like
documents/app name/downloads Instead of
Downloads/

Bit by bit? The move to mobile was like getting hit in the face with an inaccessibility bat. I hate mobile OSes with a passion. Unfortunately, they're overwhelmingly the way through which people interact with the Internet or do any kind of tech stuff anymore. I do a lot of audio work, and Android lacks even simple routing software. It just uses the last audio device plugged into it. Never mind you only want to use the mic on that and not the output. Forget using multiple devices. It's infuriating. You'll pry my desktop away from me through my cold, dead hands.

Sounds like you should install Ubuntu touch on your phone
- Doesn't work on all devices though

Android? you mean iphone maybe. i can directly access the file directory of Android both from an app or from my PC with a USB connection.

That file directory is a hot mess, though.
- yeah, i figure I'd kill myself if my PC was structured like that. but for a phone it does the job and if you need something it's not that hard to find it really.

I really do wish that more packages on Linux had installation paths clearly noted in a readme.

I've been using Linux daily for over a year now and I still have a hard time tracking down config files and install paths. Its just not one of those tasks I do regularly so I always forget best practices when trying to find stuff. The CLI always gives me the best results but getting the commands right can be tedious.

I've started saving useful commands in a note on my desktop.

People can say what they want about Windows, having stuff installed in a folder called Program Files with sub folders using the brand/program name is so much simpler than whatever the fuck is going on on Linux.
- Until an app decides to install in the hidden AppData folder with the confusing sub-folder names, or even the root of the user folder, or god forbid in a folder in the root of the C drive
- For user specific files a lot of modern programs try to adhere to https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/. You should set those environmental variables and check there first.
  For system level.. it's definitely more complicated. I check /etc first and then then /usr dirs. If you're using your system package manager there is generally a way to query it for that information, but it's typically CLI based.
  Or just use our lord and savior NixOS and configure everything in a single directory
i just give up after a couple of minutes if it isn’t somewhere obvious and then search my whole system with grep lmao.
how wonderful to live in a world where compute is so cheap.
- Amateur. I read the source on GitHub to see where it's saving that shit.
Which readme?
The one on the github that has out of date instructions and tells you to check the discord?
The 6 year out-of-date one on your distro's wiki?
or The gnu-info/manpage that is only for the original upstream and doesn't tell you where all the files have been moved or that half of the software isn't actually installed since it was split out into extra packages for justdebianthings
- Do I really need to remind this is free software made by benevolent developers? I get it it's infuriating but it's still in some way a gift you were given and seem unhappy with.
dpkg -L package-name
Or the inverse
dpkg -S /usr/bin/somefile
For apt based distros, obviously.
- This does not return all "config files and install paths" as it only ever considers files that came in the package, not files created by the package (such as /etc/samba.smb.conf, which is created during installation), so doesn't actually solve the problem.
  That limitation should've been made clear in the advice itself so as not to send users that don't know better down dead ends, though the subsequent discussion between this and the previous user is a great illustration of how the way some give Linux "advice" just ends up frustrating those seeking advice.
  (It even eventually frustrated me because over the years I've had to teach plenty of junior developers to not give advice like that, only they're seldom so bad that they insist they actually know what the other person wants even in the face of a user providing proof that they do not)
- I just tried this with Samba (so dpkg -L samba and dpkg -S samba, and I also tried adding grep "smb.conf" and running it with sudo) and I was unable to find the share config file.
  It's located under /etc/samba/smb.conf but that command was returning a path under my local user. This is on Ubuntu

We call it Linux.
- Android is built in the Linux kernel. That's actually some of what causes this - Android's permissions model takes the Linux model and amplifies it. Apps are treated like users to prevent them from messing with each other's files. If an app uses Android's downloads manager it can write to the downloads directory, but it can only see the files that it put there.
Sorry, best we can offer is renaming Control Panel again and shuffling around the place you can find certain settings

Don't you know? Users being told the exact location of a file is not user-friendly!

There are not files. There are only vibes. If your surf the vibe ocean well enough, you will find what you were looking for.

you likely can with another file manager like Amaze

I use a little app called X-plore. Gives me treed lists of folder contents and allows moving, copying, and deleting stuff.

Total Commander with LAN, FTP and WebDAV Plugin enabled is really useful (if you're using Android)

I can find files just fine on my Android phone, BUT when saving files on my iPad this meme would be true.

I was editing a document on my iPad, saved it in a folder labeled 'documents', searched with the files app and the document folder wasn't on my iPad or iCloud.

Come to find out the app itself made a folder named documents within itself. So in order to get it on my iPad itself i had to share the file to dropbox then redownload it 🤨

Same, I always have trouble with finding saved files on ipad/iphone. Often it saves a pdf as “document”, and overwrites the previous download with similar name.
- That's annoying. I have not yet had the displeasure of experiencing the overwrite problem, but i am sure it'll happen soon enough. Thanks for the heads-up!
Home puter is a Mac which I only use for the Logic DAW but they have a primary app called Finder which has never found anything I asked for. Its a Finder that doesnt Find.
Yeah, developers can't access those folders without some super specific permissions, so most just use the dedicated app folder.
- I have learned the horrors of Apple since getting this thing. Like it for drawing and 3D sculpting, but that's about it.

Yeah, it can be hard to find files sometimes. File Navigator solves this problem perfectly.

I prefer Material Files.
- Yeah, I feel you on that. It's my go to file manager as well.
Solid Explorer has always been my go to. I never understood why basic file explorer functions essentially required the use of a separate app, but it's functionality is superb and the now-baked-in-but-terrible file explorer in android can never hope to match it.

I really lost my shit when Firefox downloaded some Belfort & Lupin subtitles and I could not for the fucking live of me find them.

Turns out it put them in the "Movies" folder instead of "Downloads" where it actually put the corresponding video files.

sounds like your pitiful mind cant understand the unix file oriented philosophy and you should stay 10 feet away from all information technology /sarcasm
- now look here you little... oh actually it would be nice to get away from tech honestly......
- Technology and sarcasm?!?!

It used to be so much simpler. I remember having a Galaxy S3 and whenever I saved a file I knew exactly where it went. There was a file explorer built in, and downloads went to the downloads folder.

That was Samsung doing the work of dumbing things down for you. Stock Android has always been fast and loose with the locality of saved files. Especially if you are doing anything with an image processing app. They tend to make their own dump folders and don't bother telling you that they e made them in their own directory under the .data folder or someplace in .bin
- You say 'dumbing things down' I say 'that's kinda condescending talk that implies that anything else isn't shut when it clearly is'
Is that not how it still works? When I download a file, it either goes straight to the Downloads folder, or to an app-specific subfolder within Downloads. And there's a Files app that lets you go through the file system (although I'm sure there are some system folders that aren't accessible without rooting). I don't think I've ever been confused about where a file is saved.
- Thats my experience too.

Opens the files app which shows all files that were recently downloaded from any app to the file system.

That's like piling all your paperwork on your office desk in a giant tower in the order they came in and arguing that's just as good as sorting them into files and putting them in the cabinet.
- Is this your first file system? It literally does sort it into "videos" if I have a video or "images" if it's an image. What do you crack heads want it to do?
The meme says saved, not just download.
Open Recorder app.
Record and press save.
Open Files app.
The file is not in recent.
The file is not in audio.
Delete this bullshit.
mine doesn't do that. also, what if you're looking for a file that's older than three weeks old? should I go fuck myself then?

For real? Never used Android, but isn’t it built on Linux? It doesn’t use the same path /home/username/Downloads?

It's built on a , by now very modified and incompatible, Linux kernel. But not a GNU userland at all.
- Yeah, fuck Android. PostmarketOS is my new best friend.
It doesn’t use the same path /home/username/Downloads?
Same as what? That isn't a default path for anything in Linux either. It's a convention that browser follows though, on Windows and Mac too.

For me Files shows recent files right on top as the first thing you see when you open the app. X-Plore has a Recent Files section too. Moreover most apps that save something usually show a toast with the file/folder path when done. I don't know what you're talking about.

Beeing able to access the file doest mean you know where it is. What happens if that file isnt recent any more? Android hides the file system from the user. "Recent files" is a prime example of that.

It's almost as if this is a computer architecture designed for idiots who don't know or care what a file is or for what purposes their data is being harvested. Everywhere I hear people falling over themselves to declare that the tablet smartphone was apple's golden gift to the world. Try to do any serious work on one, it's fucking annoying.

Whenever we make technology accessible to stupid people it becomes irritating to use and a privacy nightmare.

It’s almost as if this is a computer architecture designed for ~~idiots~~ human beings who ~~don’t know or care what a file is~~ interact with computers on a non-file oriented basis or have been lied to and systemically unsupported in their education for what purposes their data is being harvested.
No hate. No useful conversation starts with calling large swaths of people idiots, is all.

just be glad you don't have an iphone. at least on android there are easy ways to remedy this.

iPhone has an app aptly named Files. Inside here are files. Pretty sure it works the same on Android.
- Pretty sure you've never used an Android, iPhone file managemt is locked down and dumbed down garbage, made so to make people more dependent on paying for and using the app store apps, without understanding the underlying system at all, and the primary reason I'm moving back to Android. Can't let some shit tech company dictate how I use my own devices file system, or what apps I can and can't install on it.

File manager > Recent files

Seriously, this thread has me very confused about how a social media platform seemingly inundated with nerds can't open a file manager (which often comes pre-installed) to find a downloads folder.

must be hard to find the download folder

the upload widget when trying to find that PDF you just saved

How is you not even aware of what a file system is LMAO 🤣

I swear to God, how is it possible that people who can access the fediverse have such trouble finding a download folder.

It's like their brains fold instantly at the thought of searching through it.

"Hurr durr, where file"

In the downloads folder

My brother in Christ, please open the fucking file explorer

This is you, it's how you look like:

That's the entire point of the post, my guy. Some apps use the Downloads folder. Some use their own. Some use a folder you set a year ago when you first got the app but don't remember anymore.
The interface abstracts away from the actual file system so finding a file becomes guesswork. Doubly so if you then want to use the downloaded file in a different app that also doesn't give access to the file system.
- perhaps OP thinks you're a goof if you don't invest in a proprietary software stack.