Why are .thunderbird and .evolution hidden ?

[Chris Smart]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Marcel Rieux <m.z.rieux at gmail.com> wrote:
> One way around this is to copy those 2 directories and then rename
> them without the beginning ".". This way you miss a few files or
> directories if you don't also rename them -- such as .#evolution.sbd
> and .parentlock -- which... might not be important -- but why the hell
> are .thunderbird and .evolution hidden in the first place?

I'm sure there's a more accurate historical reason, but all of your
application's configuration settings and data are stored that way to
avoid you deleting things accidentally and keep your home directory
clutter free. Under Windows things are hidden away in weird places
like "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Data\Application Data\" but
on Unix, everything related to you sits in your home directory. Where
else would they put it?

There's nothing stopping you from moving the contents of those hidden
directories to a non-hidden directory and then creating a symlink it
or mount bind.

-c