Reading back, my comment sounds snarky, but I was genuinely trying to be helpful.

Like what pemptago was describing, instead of symlinking your directories to /home/username/username, you could simply update that file and achieve the same effect, but in a more “official” way that may prove more robust.

Are you aware of the ‘xdg-user-dirs-update’ command that allows you to edit the ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs config file?

With the enshittification of streaming platforms, a Kodi or Jellyfin server would be a great starting point. In my case, I have both, and the Kodi machine gets the files from the Jellyfin machine through NFS.

Or Home Assistant to help keep IOT devices that tend to be more IoS. Or a Nextcloud server to try to degoogle at least a little bit.

Maybe a personal Friendica instance for your LAN so your family can get their Facebook addiction without giving their data to Meta?

Linux is great about providing that feeling of discovery. New tools, new processes, new paradigm… It’s the best way to breathe new life into an old piece of hardware.

If this is your first major step, congratulations! If you’re a regular, great job, keep it up; eventually you’ll be a grey beard with the rest of us.

I’d love to kick some money his way, but he only has two tiers: $20/mo and $100/mo. I think he could get a lot more donations if he started with a $5/mo tier.

I think he’d also do well to make a “this is why you should use bcachefs of ext4” sort of post to bring awareness to the project and its benefits.