Why is there no more ~/.Trash?

Question

I remember the nice mv somefile ~/.Trash command but that folder does not exist on newer Ubuntus. Does anyone know why?

score 35 · Accepted Answer · edited May 25 '23 at 10:20

According to the freedesktop.org Trash Specification:

For every user a “home trash” directory MUST be available. Its name and location are $XDG_DATA_HOME/Trash ; $XDG_DATA_HOME is the base directory for user-specific data, as defined in the Desktop Base Directory Specification.

If the environment variable $XDG_DATA_HOME is either not set or empty, ~/.local/share is used. So by default, the trash folder is ~/.local/share/Trash.

Regardless, the easiest and best way to trash a file from the command line is to use the trash Install trash-cli command.

Use it like you would use rm:

trash somefile.txt

This is better than just mv'ing a file into ~/.local/share/Trash because it stores metadata such as where the file was originally so you can restore (un-delete) it if need be.

In the version of trash-cli I installed today (2012-06-24), the command is trash-put instead of trash. — Benjamin Oakes, Jun 24 '12 at 13:39

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 18 '10 at 05:43

10

You can find it here. ~/.local/share/Trash/

answered Nov 18 '10 at 05:43

aneeshep

30,321

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 18 '10 at 08:21

6

it is because of the latest XDG Base Directory Specification: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

answered Nov 18 '10 at 08:21

Praweł

6,490

I want to mark this as the real answer to my question because I it is a "why" question but the spec does not mention anything abut Trash folders. Could you please explain how XDG spec affected the .Trash convention? – Aleksandr Levchuk Nov 22 '10 at 22:32
@Aleksandr I have updated my answer with an explanation. – Isaiah Nov 23 '10 at 02:33
@Aleksandr Updated DoR answer explains everything :) – Praweł Nov 23 '10 at 06:38

Why is there no more ~/.Trash?

3 Answers3