> The average user does not see things like app config files, cache data, etc as their own files.
All the more reason to put this stuff into the user directory, so that it is automatically included in backups and syncs done by the unaware user.
> The current /home has so much absolute junk that it's easy to not know where your stuff is.
Not my experience. Application data of application XYZ is either in ~/.xyz or in ~/.{config,local,cache}/xyz, depending on whether the application is FHS compliant or not.
All the more reason to put this stuff into the user directory, so that it is automatically included in backups and syncs done by the unaware user.
> The current /home has so much absolute junk that it's easy to not know where your stuff is.
Not my experience. Application data of application XYZ is either in ~/.xyz or in ~/.{config,local,cache}/xyz, depending on whether the application is FHS compliant or not.