I try to set up my digital home with few dotfiles. There is a common denominator for configuration in UNIX called environment variables. It is not as complex as Windows Registers and not as widely used. But I try to rely on them as most as I can, because it is easy to move configuration back and forth when all you need to change is the script you call to set those variables.

I keep the notes on how to set up my digital home in a home.txt file. All my system revolves around three scripts: profile, which set the variables; session, which sets a terminal session; and this Rube Goldberg machine I call xsession, which sets a X11 session. All scripts depend on programs that can be used as is, with as little configuration as possible. The script gluing them together is how I configure them.