A little help understanding more.

[fallow dove]

I pretty much know about the home folder but here are some questions that I have.

home's .cache folder: is where applications and stuff stores cache files? (Or at least those that choose to store cache in .cache)
home's .config folder: where your configuration files are stored?
home's .gnupg folder: I have no idea what this is.
home's .icons folder: Is it something to do with my theme?
home's .linuxmint folder: May I have more information on this folder?
home's .local folder: May I have more information on this folder?
home's .pki folder: I have no idea what this is.
home's .ssh folder: empty folder?
home's .themes folder: empty folder?
home's .var folder: It seems to be where .flatpak apps are stored?

And there are some files (not folders) in .home but I believe their names are kind of self explanatory.

Thank you.

[candid oxide]

#1295846191409528952 message

[fallow dove]

Oh, thank you. I'll read that.

[languid stratus]

I will answer a few that you seem more confused with and I am familiar with, and might not be easy to find in the manual,

home's .icons folder: Is it something to do with my theme?

Yes, your icon theme specifically, it changes icons, not how a window looks for example.

home's .local folder: May I have more information on this folder?

From my understanding, it works like a user version of /usr/, so for example, you may be asked to enter password to access /usr/share/applications/ to put a .desktop file, so you can see a "launcher" for a program in your start menu application list, but you can just put the same thing in ~/.local/share/applications/ and that will work too, if same named file exists in /usr, it will override that from my understanding, but not 100% sure on this part.

If your ~/.bashrc has something like (usually does)

# User specific environment
if ! [[ "$PATH" =~ "$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:" ]]; then
    PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi
export PATH

you can put a program_x in ~/.local/bin/, and when you start typing the name like prog in terminal/console and press tab, you you get auto fill suggestion and can launch it, just from name, like you would a program in /usr/bin/, etc.

home's .themes folder: empty folder?

This is where you put themes like the ones made for GTK, QT, etc, they change how your desktop and windows look, and not the icons.

For many other things, if you were a developer of a program I use, I would expect you to store the configuration file, if any, in ~/.config/ and any user data in ~/.local/share/your organization name/program name/.
BUT as you would expect, if I am running your program (not as root with sudo), your program can basically make a directory or file anywhere in my user directory ~/home/myusername/ , the program has most permissions I have, unless I manually set some places to be read only, etc. So some programs just go their own way, Mozilla likes to save everything in home directory under ~/.mozilla/ for example, what can we do..

~ is your home directory.

[fallow dove]

I see, thank you.

[atomic crest]

The home directory is actually mostly chaos where every program just does whatever it wants and it fills up with crap really fast and you can't do anything about it short of rewriting all your computer software to store and look for files in standard places

Standard places, such as, th XDG base directory free desktop specification

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/

Which some programs adhere to but clearly not all