I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can’t tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.

read the man page

The good ol’ RTFM

For real. Usually the config file locations is at the bottom, so jumping to it is quick.

this is not really what the article is about.

yes you can read man page, you can find there all possible locations of config files. yet you still don’t know where config file is stored. you have to check all the possible locations.

also if there would be some standard so you can query app for its config files, you could make automated backups easily. at least much easier that now.

of course I understand this is completely unrealistic, in software world everyone will do whatever they want…

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 60 users / day
  • 170 users / week
  • 619 users / month
  • 2.31K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.28K Posts
  • 67K Comments
  • Modlog