Ubuntu - permanently remove ~/Videos and ~/Public

Question

I've deleted the folders, but every time I sign back in they're recreated. I've edited ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and removed the offending lines, but they're replaced when I log back in! The file say's it's auto-generated by /usr/bin/xdg-user-dirs-update, but that seems to be a dead end.

Answer 1

3 files control the "personal special folders" behaviour:

• ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs - allow the user to specify a custom path for the special folders. So you can have you Music folder in, say, "$HOME/My Music", or "/datapartition/mp3". Its does not allow you to "disable" those folders. If you delete one line (or the whole file), default values will be used, as you have already noticed.

• /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf (overrided by ~/.config/user-dirs.conf) - Allows you to enable or disable the automatic folder (re-)creation. If you set enabled=False, either globally of for your own user only, special folders will not be re-created at login anymore in case you delete or rename the folders.

• /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults- Global template for folders path and name. This is the file read when ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs is re-created. Be aware that changing default names will prevent folder names to be localized (translated) if you change your Language/Locale.

By the way, the service you disabled was just the daemon that would offer to rename the folders in case you changed your Language/Locale.

Answer 2

It is actually a daemon that creates those folders, check the startup preferences, its on the system menu i believe, you can easily disable that feature.

Answer 3

You can try install Ubuntu Tweak... under "Personal"+"Default Folder Locations" tab: you can change the location of the folders to wherever you wish or you can just have them all pointing to the same directory (i.e. /home/user/)