Linux distros are largely a nightmare of userland spaghetti, with no willingness to enforce strict conventions and patterns.

I still use it, but I’ll call it as I see it.

I do not browse Lemmy to be attacked, sir.

I hate when programs use home dir for config, data and god forbid, cache. Having . is not an excuse, people. Use .config or literally anywhere else.

Not wrong.

Must be something wrong my Linux systems then, with their sparkling clean home directories

mine is… empty. Just a secondary drive with a bunch of folders, each containing a docker-compose.yml

Then my vps only has a single docker-compose.yml

And my pc runs an os that’s actually decent for desktop use

1. chmod 500 /home/bob

Now your user can’t create or rename files in that top level directory. This means your programs can’t either.

2. Set XDG_CONFIG_HOME to /home/bob/.config

There are more variables, but this one alone is the biggest change.

3. Move/remove offending programs.

Self explanatory.

Spec, support.