Linux History: How Dot Files Became Hidden Files

Speaking of Linux files, there's one feature I'd like to see in the GUI.

In Linux, when you drag a file to a folder and hover, you've got one option: drop it into that folder. Another OS I used would wait for a second, then 'open' that folder so that you could drop your file into a sub-directory ... or drill down further by hovering over another. I wish!

Old habits die hard. Maybe that can already be done, or there's an app or setting I've missed. If so, GREAT, I could quit mumbling every time.

UNIX history, there isn't anything Linux related in regards to dot files.

Dot files are one thing about Linux that seems to be truly timeless.

We might not see them directly anymore, we have GUI settings tools, but I can't think of any better way to manage local app settings.

Any kind of registry model seems to always require you to learn even more stuff than just some dotfiles.

Normally old UNIX stuff doesn't really fit the modern way of doing things, but dotfiles are still standing.

One problem that I have experienced recently with GitHub is that it hides these sorts of hidden files. This means that you cannot properly review the repository before checking it out. Or am I missing some hidden feature equivalent to ‘ls -a’?

Fun story! But I still don’t understand what the single ‘.’ file was meant for. How does it contribute to easy navigation?