The term usually refers to a (shareable) collection of all sorts of user configuration files, often through a VCS such as git. A collection of dotfiles might help to set up a fresh system, incorporate ideas & changes from different (but similar) systems, or to share these files with other Linux .....

Not Recommended This approach is doubtlessly very clever and professional, but I failed miserably in using it, and almost wrecked my $HOME in the process. This has made me much more careful and I now favour this approach. In the past, I already attempted to manage some of my configuration files, .....