Is it possible to use a different folder than .minecraft? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Minecraft uses the user.home (Java) system property to determine the location of the home directory of the user. You can change the system-variable responsible for it and so alter the location of the .minecraft directory.

Linux (and alike):

#!/bin/sh

export HOME=/path/to/your/target
java -jar -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M minecraft.jar

Windows:

set APPDATA=D:\path\to\your\target
java -jar -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M minecraft.jar

Another possibility would be to symlink the directory (at least on Linux and Unix-like OSs). Something along the lines of this:

$ ln -s /path/to/your/target ~/.minecraft