Digital Legion: How I stopped switching layouts and turned Linux into a "Roman" terminal

🇷🇺 Read in Russian


It all started with a mundane problem familiar to many. When you live in Europe, buying a laptop becomes a quest. If you want a decent machine, you either have to settle for the local Latin layout or resort to keyboard stickers.


Stickers are a special kind of aesthetic torture. They wear off, peel at the corners, and turn a stylish laptop into something resembling a late-USSR era computer lab. At some point, I realized: I don't want to see Cyrillic on my keys anymore. I want a clean, minimalist keyboard.


Besides, I’m a touch-typist in Russian, so it doesn't really matter whether the keys are marked or not.


I use Fedora with a clean GNOME setup. By default, the system "helpfully" creates home folders in Russian. It looks fine in the GUI, but in the terminal, it turns into a nightmare.


Writing code is tedious enough when your primary layout is English, but you suddenly need to jump into the "Downloads" folder. This is where the endless cycle begins:



This isn't just about extra movements — it's a mental "hitch." When you're in the zone, every such switch is like a pothole on a high-speed highway.


I thought the standard English names (Downloads, Documents) were too boring. If I was going to overhaul the system for the Latin alphabet, I was going to do it with Imperial grandeur.


The idea came from a few alternative history images my brother sent me. They featured terminal-style captions at the bottom of the frame. In that world, the Roman Empire never fell but survived into the modern era as a high-tech superpower. Their terminals didn't use English — they used Latin. Short, punchy, and using the same characters as the English alphabet.


Since my computer is my headquarters — my personal "digital castrum" — I decided my rank in it would be Optio. This Latin title is perfect: it’s gender-neutral, denotes an assistant or administrator, and sounds incredibly stern.


In Linux, standard folders are governed by the XDG standard. All paths are defined in the ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs file. If you open it, you'll see the classic list: XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Загрузки" and so on.


Interestingly, there is an official locale called la_VA (Latin, Vatican City State). If I were to install the system with this locale (though the translation is far from complete), the XDG folders according to linguist-enthusiasts would look like this:


XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Area operandi"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Recepta"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documenta"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Musica"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Imagines"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Pelliculae"

Vatican "Ecclesiastical" Latin is very soft and descriptive. For a terminal, it’s less fitting than my "Military" variant from alternative history.


For comparison:


Nevertheless, the Vatican is the only place in the world where Latin left the history books and entered a real UI on ATMs. Don't ask how I know, but you can actually choose Latin as your language there.


Here is how standard operations look there (practically the prototype for my directories):


By the way, Vatican admins often use the word "Capsula" (small box) or "Scrinium" (chest for scrolls) to refer to a "folder" in their documentation.


In the end, I replaced the Russian values with Latin terms that are easy to type in an English layout:


# Editing: nano ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Suggestum"     # Desktop (platform/tribunal)
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Advecta"      # Downloads (brought in)
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Exemplaria"  # Templates (models/samples)
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Publicum"  # Public (common property)
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Tabularium"  # Documents (archive)
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Musica"          # Music
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Imagines"     # Pictures (images)
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Visiones"       # Videos (visions)

Linux can be overprotective: if it notices the "Downloads" folder is missing, it might try to recreate it at the next login. To prevent this, you need to create (or edit) the user-dirs.conf file:


echo "enabled=False" > ~/.config/user-dirs.conf

Now, the physical files must be moved. This is done quickly in the terminal, but remember to escape spaces in Russian names:


mv ~/Рабочий\ стол ~/Suggestum
mv ~/Загрузки ~/Advecta
mv ~/Документы ~/Tabularium
mv ~/Изображения ~/Imagines
mv ~/Музыка ~/Musica
mv ~/Видео ~/Visiones
mv ~/Шаблоны ~/Exemplaria
mv ~/Общедоступные ~/Publicum

If you simply rename "Загрузки" to "Downloads" or "Advecta" via the right-click menu, it turns into a boring, plain grey folder. It loses its "special directory" status and its unique icon.


But the user-dirs.dirs method works differently. Since we defined the paths in the system config, Nautilus (GNOME's file manager) understands: "Aha, Advecta is now the official place for imported resources."


The result is impressive:


In the terminal, you feel like a grim Imperial administrator typing "cd ~/Tabularium," while in the GUI, you can still navigate instantly using familiar icons.


In Latin, many titles are gendered, but there are excellent third-declension options that are grammatically "common gender" (commune) — they are written and sound the same regardless of who is being addressed.


There are some quite good, proud-sounding, and gender-neutral options:


1. Civis (Citizen / Inhabitant)

The most authentic term for the Roman aesthetic.


2. Sodalis (Comrade / Companion / Member of a guild)

Perfect if you prefer the atmosphere of a "legion" or a close-knit circle of like-minded people — or perhaps the "friendly" vibe of a Communist party before the inevitable purges.


3. Custos (Guardian / Warden)

Ideal if you're hiding several terabytes of porn from your parents.


Open your config file via "nano ~/.bashrc" and insert whichever you prefer at the end.


For example:

echo "Ave, Civis! Systema parata est."

For myself, I chose Optio. This Latin rank means an assistant or administrator and sounds incredibly tough. I also added a golden color to the text — because, well, Rome.


echo -e "\e[1;33mSalve, Optio! Legio te salutat.\e[0m"

Next, I ran into a classic Fedora issue. It doesn't always happen, but apparently, it can. I had no issues with aliases on my desktop, but my laptop decided to "mess with my head." I wrote my beautiful aliases and greeting in ~/.bashrc, but nothing happened when I opened the terminal. It turns out GNOME Terminal in Fedora often runs as a "login shell," meaning it looks for .bash_profile first and ignores .bashrc.


To fix this "bridge," I added this block to ~/.bash_profile:


if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi

For total automation and to ditch the layout switching, you can add a set of commands to .bashrc to make the workflow seamless. My tools are now named like this:


alias ferrum='cargo'
alias codex='git'
alias expugna='sudo'
alias vale='exit' # To leave in style

After running "source ~/.bashrc", the system was transformed. Still, before using such aliases, I’d recommend giving your brain some time to get used to the new directory names.


Now my workflow looks like this: I open the terminal, see the golden text "Salve, Optio! Legio te salutat.", type "cd ~/Advecta", then "codex status" — all in a single layout, without a single Super + Space.


This isn't just about saving time. It’s the feeling of total control over my "digital province," where everything works by my rules, and a keyboard without Cyrillic has finally become an advantage rather than a limitation.


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