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Discussion on: Linux probably isn't for you

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Mikko Rantalainen

Dot files work different for different versions of any given software where the developers of that software fail to support forwards and backwards compatibility of their own software. Dot files are not saved nor read by the distributions itself.

The dconf is the only somewhat standardized and shared configuration file format, all other dot files are fully custom to each application and designed by developers of said application.

Older software usually handles forwards and backwards compatibility well because it used to be common to mount home directory (where these dot files are stored) over NFS and different systems were running different versions of each application. Younger developers don't seem to know this or just don't mind anymore.

See .gitconfig for an example of config file that doesn't break when you switch to different version. That's because Git developers do mind about backwards compatibility and that doesn't change between distros.

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