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I'm backup/syncing my dotfiles in my $HOME-Directory via git. I don't want to sync everything of course, so I ignore everything via .gitignore and re-add the important files.
*
!.bash*
.*.swp
.bash_history
.bash_local
.bash_logout
!.profile
Which files are necessary to back up in an Ubuntu Gnome environment which belongs to the system settings, like user-specific preferences or theme settings?
Since GNOME settings are generally stored via the GSettings API, and some of those files are binaries/databases, your best bet is to rely on dconf tool:
To export settings:
dconf dump / > dconf-settings.ini
To import settings:
dconf load / < dconf-settings.ini
You could save the contents of $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dconf(most of the time, it represents ~/.config/dconf) but that would not be suitable for git since those files are not plaintext.
This Gnome Settings export will also contain all settings related to Mate Desktop and Cinnamon Desktop since they are objects inside the root schema ( / ). To export those desktops settings only:
Cinnamon:
dconf dump /org/cinnamon/ > dconf-cinnamon.ini
Mate:
dconf dump /org/mate > dconf-mate.ini
Backup custom themes.
To backup your custom themes/icons, compressing the folders ~/.icons and ~/.themes should be enough. Maybe you should keep the original theme files you already have at your home dir...
gsettings instead of dconf, which is more portable and reasonable. gsettings use schema id while dconf as low-level implementation detail use schema path.
gsettings? Do you have an example since, even inside Gnome Documentation dconf seems to be the right tool to dump configurations while gsettings is only to set, monitor and get those values? - systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/1-gsettings - Also, this document has no examples so, it's hard to see gsettings as the adequate tool for this task...
~/.config/dconf), so it's not suitable for Git.