[arch-general] User Environment Setup in Arch Linux?

[Andrei Thorp]

> What I do is:
> ln -s ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile
>
> To always have the same settings

Possibly a bad idea. If you only use your .bashrc to store a couple
variables, that'll get you by. If you're actually using your .bashrc /
.zshrc / whatever, that doesn't make sense to do. For example, by
.zshrc provides a completely new command, sets console-specific
settings (like mime-type support), overrides the operation of several
commands so that they may not work as expected in scripts, and so on.
I think as a general guideline, your profile file should have _just_
settings like "EDITOR=vim" or "PATH=blah". Maybe you could put aliases
in there also.

If you want to have "the same settings" in both cases, just have your
.bashrc source your .bash_profile.

Cheers,

-Andrei Thorp