Where is the $HOME folder located?

Question

I read recently that .desktop files that are used as desktop shortcuts are placed in the $HOME/Desktop directory. Where is this directory?

Also, what does the $ part mean / do?

AJefferiss · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-19T14:11:20.463

34

$HOME is an environment variable that contains the location of your home directory, usually /home/$USER. The $ tells us it's a variable. So assuming your user is called DevRobot the .desktop files are placed in /home/DevRobot/Desktop/.

If you want to know where $HOME points to, you can run the following in a terminal.

[ajefferiss@localhost ~]$ echo "$HOME"
/home/ajefferiss

You can use it to move around the filesystem, for example cd $HOME but generally you won't see that because you can use ~/ to represent the current users home directory. Or just run cd by itself to move to the home directory.

edited Oct 19 '15 at 14:11

answered Oct 19 '15 at 11:13

AJefferiss

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Note that $HOME also varies user to user. Some system users have an oddball $HOME path not on /home/... – Thomas Ward Oct 19 '15 at 12:34
... for example /root for root. – Ruslan Oct 19 '15 at 12:40
See my edit >:-D same goes for $USER. – Rinzwind Oct 19 '15 at 12:41
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Or just run cd by itself to move to the home directory, TIL – TMH Oct 19 '15 at 14:59
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Holy crap, @TomHart, do you know how many times I've typed cd ~ without realizing I could skip the awkward shift-pinky move? – Digital Chris Oct 19 '15 at 15:48
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Probably similar to the amount of times I've typed cd ~/! – TMH Oct 19 '15 at 16:20
@DigitalChris You could use a better keyboard layout to avoid this. – user530873 Oct 19 '15 at 18:24
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@AnotherGoogler the best keyboard layout is the one where you get what is printed on the key when you press it. ;) – Digital Chris Oct 19 '15 at 18:32
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Actually HOME is the environment variable. The shell needs you to prepend it with $ to signify it. – Mark Hurd Oct 20 '15 at 04:34
Guys, you could alias cd ~ to a command like gohome or something short,too. ( I know it's redundant, just kidding here ) – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Nov 02 '15 at 11:23
@DigitalChris by the way ~ used to be on the same key as HOME key – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Nov 02 '15 at 11:25

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 19 '15 at 12:08

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$HOME is an environment variable that points to /home/<username>. It is located under /, and it contains the user's files.

For more information you may want to take a look at Bash Reference Manual

edited Oct 19 '15 at 12:08

hytromo

4,904

answered Oct 19 '15 at 11:14

Mitch

107,631

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There's absolutely no rule that $HOME has to point to /home/<username>. Apache on Ubuntu creates a user www-data whose $HOME is /var/www, e.g. – Alex Oct 19 '15 at 15:32
@Alex we are talking here in regards to Ubuntu and, Linux. :) – Mitch Oct 19 '15 at 16:07
Actually HOME is the environment variable. The shell needs you to prepend it with $ to signify it. – Mark Hurd Oct 20 '15 at 04:34
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I was talking about Ubuntu/Linux too, Mitch. /home/<username> is a convention, not a requirement. It's easy to add a user whose $HOME is at /somewhere/entirely/different. – Alex Oct 20 '15 at 14:27
I set my $HOME location to something different (another partition from an earlier install) and now can't find it... – DPSSpatial Jul 04 '18 at 15:10

Where is the $HOME folder located?

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