dotfiles

My cross platform dotfiles managed by chezmoi.

User Program Data

I use ~/.config/ to store my configuration preferences (for user program data, such as bash, zsh, iterm2, Visual Studio Code, etc.).

This is a recent innovation, followed by Gnome and thus by Ubuntu, to store user-specific data in fixed directories.

According to this document, there is:

• a single directory where user data is stored (program state from my use), defaulting to ~/.local/share;
• a single directory where configuration (my preferences) is stored, defaulting to ~/.config;
• a single directory which holds non-essential data files (deletable cache), defaulting to ~/.cache.

Historically, Unix programs were free to spread their data all over the $HOME directory, putting their data in dot-files (files starting with ".") or subdirectories such as ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim. The new specification is intended to make this behavior more predictable. I suspect this makes backups of application data easier, in addition to giving your home directory a tidier appearance.

Not all applications adhere to this standard yet!

Source: https://askubuntu.com/a/14536