I keep most of them in a git repository that I check out at ~/.config. Some software doesn’t follow the XDG Base Directory Specification out of the box but can be configured to do so; the Arch Linux wiki has an article about it. For software that cannot be configured to follow the standard I have dedicated repositories, like for OpenSSH.

I use Syncthing with a folder called “Configuration Files” where I drop all my sync-able configs and dotfiles and I simply symlink them as needed.

I don’t necessarily sync my dotfiles across machines, at least not in a blanket fashion. But I use Seafile to keep all sorts of directories in sync across machines. It’s basically a self-hostable Dropbox.

GNU Stow, backed up to a git repo.

For those who might not see the purpose, it’s for keeping your profiles on different machines in sync, especially if you use the terminal a lot.

Nix, but I’d only recommend it if you share my same brand of mental illness

I don’t… when setting up a new system I just copy what I need from any random machine I have logged into at the time. As I need different config for different systems it doesn’t really make sense to have one perfect config on all either…

Gnu stow and a git repository.

stow creates bulk symlinks according to the folder structure.

I use YADM which is a thin wrapper around a bare git repo but still has some creature comforts like per-machine configs and templating.
Since you still need to interact with Git, I pair it with Lazygit. Love that software, I do everything Git with it now!
Unfortunately it is a little jank due to the way Lazygit handles bare repos, thankfully there’s a command that sets up the needed Git variables for it to work correctly: yadm enter lazygit

I send the repo to my own Forgejo instance. Kinda overkill but I was already self-hosting other services so I thought “Fully private Git server just for me? Why not?”

Now, this is only for managing user level files. For managing system level configs I haven’t setup anything yet.
YADM has a solution for this but it seems a little jank, maybe I’ll learn Ansible instead, dunno.

chezmoi does everything I need. It’s really nice; would recommend.

How many dot files are you changing to need some sort of manager?

I do manage them via git. But I only do it so have settings (and their changes) synchonised between 2 PCs and a laptop.

With just one main device I don’t even see a reason to “manage” anything… a basic backup strategy completely independent of just dotfiles aside.

I used to have everything in a git repo, but nowadays I use Nix with Home Manager, and I don’t want to look back.

Don’t need to I use nix

This is how I handle my nix configs though

https://github.com/Givlucas/nixos

I just wrote a bash script copies the relevant files or directories I want to back up from either ~ or ~/.config and places them in a local git directory which I then push to a private repo on Codeberg. Super janky and manual but I update dotfiles so seldom that it works for what I need.

Nothing at all. If things go south on the install I’ll have a clean slate. Really the only thing I have backed up are keys, everything else is nonessential.