(debian-policy.info)User configuration files “dotfiles”

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10.7.5 User configuration files (“dotfiles”)
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The files in ‘/etc/skel’ will automatically be copied into new user
accounts by ‘adduser’.  No other program should reference the files in
‘/etc/skel’.

Therefore, if a program needs a dotfile to exist in advance in ‘$HOME’
to work sensibly, that dotfile should be installed in ‘/etc/skel’ and
treated as a configuration file.

However, programs that require dotfiles in order to operate sensibly are
a bad thing, unless they do create the dotfiles themselves
automatically.

Furthermore, programs should be configured by the Debian default
installation to behave as closely to the upstream default behavior as
possible.

Therefore, if a program in a Debian package needs to be configured in
some way in order to operate sensibly, that should be done using a
site-wide configuration file placed in ‘/etc’.  Only if the program
doesn’t support a site-wide default configuration and the package
maintainer doesn’t have time to add it may a default per-user file be
placed in ‘/etc/skel’.

‘/etc/skel’ should be as empty as we can make it.  This is particularly
true because there is no easy (or necessarily desirable) mechanism for
ensuring that the appropriate dotfiles are copied into the accounts of
existing users when a package is installed.