Important hidden .dot files in your home partition
They are files & directories with a "." dot in front of them. Placing a "." dot in front of a file or directory tells the operating system that such files & directories are to be hidden from view in file managers, file requesters & such. File managers & other applications can usually be set to view these normally hidden files. These hidden files & directories usually contain configuration files of some sort.
These hidden files will be referred to as <.dot> files in this article.
Why is it worth knowing about these <.dot> files?
- These files contain settings/configuration information that will often need to be modified
- It is well worthwhile knowing which <.dot> directories & files in your ~/ directory are valuable in saving you time & effort if you have to reinstall Manjaro due to a hardware failure, corrupt data, user error...
- If you are coming from, or going to another distro, this can be extremely valuable knowledge. As again, these <.dot> files can save you an enormous amount of time & effort in configuring your system to be just the way you like it. More on this to come.
- This knowledge can also be used to backup important config files, some of which can have had many, many hours of work in them.
So, what do these <.dot> files in my /home do?
Looking in your ~ directory can identify any folders that have configuration or other customised data for our system, including the DE/WM and applications.
Some examples of these are; panels, trays, clocks, text editors, image viewers, pdf viewers & other applications. A quick look in your ~/.config directory will make this clear.
A reference to key <.dot> files
The following represent some of the most common types of <.dot> files that are found directly in your home folder. This is not an extensive list but represents some of the most common items.
Directories
.cache - Contains cached application files. Keep an eye on this folder as sometimes application caches can grow over time.
.config - This is where most modern applications keep user specific configuartion. This is the first place you should look for application related configuration files. Also, it is worth noting that any config files in this directory will have absolutely no effect if the program that they belong to is not installed on your machine. So orphan config files pose absolutely no danger.
.local - Holds a user specific version of /usr/local. Most notably application launchers can be found in .local/share/applications
.mozilla - Configuration data for Firefox
.ssh - ssh keys, known hosts and other per user ssh configuration
.steam - Data, config and game files for Valve's Steam platform
Files
.bash_profile & .bashrc - Per user configuration for bash
.xinitrc - If it is present in a user's home directory, startx and xinit execute it. Otherwise startx will run the default /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.
.zshrc - Per user configuration for zsh
Re-using /home
People often get into trouble due to their keeping their old /home partition for a couple of prime reasons:
- 1. Permission problems (if they are using a different user name for example).
- 2. They have a mixture of hidden <.dot> files from multiple distros in /home
Before trying to re-use an existing /home be sure to review this section of the Partioning Wiki Page
When coping <.dot> files from one /home to another, it is important to be selective, especially when doing so between different distros or different versions of the same distro. For example, it is unwise to copy an entire ~/.config over but perfectly safe to bring over many of the files within it on an application by application basis.