Talk:General recommendations

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XDG Base Directory

Proposition to add 'Organize user configuration' section in 'System maintenance' and make more obvious reference to 'XDG Base Directory support' and 'Dotfiles#Version control'

Of course I agree that there shouldn't be a detailed explanation here, however I think it's also true that currently it's not very easy to reach XDG Base Directory support through links from this article: I think the best path is only from a link in System maintenance#Old configuration files, which is a too specific section. What if we add a new, more explicit section in System maintenance (maybe only under System_maintenance#Tips_and_tricks?) like this:


Organize user configuration

Many applications store user-specific data, such as configuration files, inside the $HOME folder: in order to facilitate maintenance it is important to organize those files in a rational and easily-accessible way. See XDG Base Directory support for the most commonly followed standard; see Dotfiles#Version control for common helper tools.


Kynikos (talk) 14:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That sounds good, but it'd be even better as part of a larger Backup section, with amongst others a link to Synchronization_and_backup_programs. -- Alad (talk) 19:42, 21 September 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
But System_maintenance#Backup already links to Synchronization_and_backup_programs, or were you talking about adding a Backup section to this very article?
Instead, I propose to:
  1. Rename System_maintenance#Clean_the_filesystem to #Tidy_up_the_file_systems;
  2. Rename System_maintenance#Old_configuration_files to #Organize_configuration_files;
  3. Merge my section above into #Organize_configuration_files;
  4. Merge the link to Dotfiles#Version control inside System_maintenance#Configuration_files.
Kynikos (talk) 11:19, 22 September 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proposition to add a section about how to fix problems when you bork your system

I saw on a recent thread on the ArchLinux subreddit that a lot of people had managed to bork there system. One thing I noticed on this thread was the overwhelming amount of people that ended up reinstalling for what would be a simple to solve problem. The most common issues were accidental rm -rf's and messing up the partition table. What I would like to propose is a section, in an area that would be read by a lot of people, that would go over basic steps to recover simple problems (there is already an article on file recovery, but most people assume they have borked their system before actually checking. Hence why I would like it in a place where a lot of people will see it). An example is that people can fix most file deletion and partition table recoveries using testdisk

Rhysperry111 (talk) 18:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We already have Category:System recovery especially featuring General troubleshooting, I think you may want to propose expanding that article in Talk:General troubleshooting.
Since you put this discussion here though, I'll just say that this article is not the place for troubleshooting tips: in general, we organize content to group information on the same topic together, we don't try to "bundle" topics with others just to increase their visibility.
-- Kynikos (talk) 00:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]