F8devel - user configuration storage locations

[Tony Nelson]

At 2:07 AM +1000 6/16/07, David Timms wrote:
>Steven Bakker wrote:
>> On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:03:20 -0400 Tony Nelson wrote:
>>
>>>>>  cp -a ~/.*
>>>> Not simple. If you do that you'll try to copy over the parent tree due to
>>>> '..' (that is satisfy your code) represents parent and '.' represents
>>>> current folder.
>>> Not simple, but how about:
>>>
>>>     cp -a ~/.[!.]* .
>>
>> chsh -s /bin/zsh
>> cp -a ~/.*
>>
>> ;-)
>All those howto' are nice, but perhaps miss the point. Let's say I am a
>new linux user. Many apps I start store their config somewhere. Where ?
>
>Why make the configs files hidden at all ? ...
 ...

So new users won't edit them or delete them.  Really.  There is no
information in those files that a *new* user can safely change.  They must
get competent technical assistance first, which will know about .files as
well as which files to change and how.  This is *nix, and it is not "safe".

Stupid user story:  About 10 years ago, my brother commented that he'd
grown to approve of Mac OS after his boss was moved from MSWindows
(version?) to a Mac.  His boss would "free up space" by deleting any file
or directory that struck his fancy.  This made MSWindows stop working, when
he would delete applications or system directories, and it took a while to
fix.  On the Mac, putting files in the trash did no horm, and my brother
would, once a week, select all files that shouldn't have been deleted and
use the Put Away command on them, and then empty the trash.
-- 
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