When I first started using computers, I remember spending lots of time poring over manuals, and finding all the settings and places I could customize my settings. I would change my prompt, add lots of aliases and shortcuts. When the first windowing systems came along (for me it was SunView) I did the same thing. I moved all the icons around, customized the menu and how things worked to suit me. If there was a setting, I goofed with it.

Then SunView was replaced by X Windows (though I think there was a short interlude using MGR), and so I did it all over again. And then the window manager changed, and then I did it all over again. And then another window manager. And there were different window managers on Sun and on Linux, so my work and home systems were different. And then Gnome came out; another radical change. And then I had the misfortune of getting stuck on a Windows desktop. And then it changed. Every time all my customizations would break and I would struggle to figure out how to do the same things in the new system. Over and over.

After a decade or two of this, I just gave up. Just live with the defaults, and make the bare minimum changes you need to get your work done, because the next OS update is going to break them all. Don’t get comfortable as the music may stop at any time. Maybe someday the constant churn of user interfaces will settle on something stable, “but I know engineers, they love to change things”

However, I would like to note two exceptions to this: Bash and Emacs. My startup files for those have code in them that has been there since the days I started using them (circa 1989), both have undergone major changes over the years, but the fundamentals have largely stayed the same, and with them I can be largely comfortable on most any system.