What is /home/common?

The /home/common is a folder, a special folder. Files and directories in /home/common can be accessed by all users in your computer. Its special because, only the user who drag-and-drop (i.e. create) files in /home/common can delete or modify them, others can only access them but they cannot delete or modify.

Why /home/common is important?

In Unix-like operating systems, users' files are kept in home directories. Eg. user1 and user2 are home directories in red circles in the above diagram.

Advantage of this scheme is files in home directories are private to respective user and no other user can access another user's files! That is, user1 above cannot read, modify or delete user2's files and vice versa. That guaranties complete privacy in Tomahawk Desktop and allows unlimited customisation of your desktop without disrupting other users.

The disadvantage of the above scheme is if one user has a music album, no other user can listen to it unless they duplicate it in their home directories. That is, everybody has to convert the CD to MP3 or other music file format of their choice and make a private copy, thereby, wasting valuable hard disk space.

Situation is worse yet if you are audiophile who uses Tomahawk Desktop to listen to high definition music in FLAC. The FLAC is a professional grade lossless audio compression format which roughly requires 600MB per CD album. That is, if you want to convert 100 CD albums to FLAC, you need nearly 60GB of disk space. So, duplication per user is simply out.

Tomahawk's solution to enjoy audio and video without wasting hard disk space is /home/common directory. That is, keep all your audio and video in one place. Of course, you can create sub directories under /home/common to organise your audio, video and other files.