I keep most of them in a git repository that I check out at ~/.config. Some software doesn’t follow the XDG Base Directory Specification out of the box but can be configured to do so; the Arch Linux wiki has an article about it. For software that cannot be configured to follow the standard I have dedicated repositories, like for OpenSSH.

Yeah. Over on Moronix Phoronix, every article about Rust, systemd, Wayland or –to a lesser extent– GNOME is a troll fest.

Indeed; the title confused me too. I guess they assumed the connection with Europe to be implicit, given they are the European Center for Digital Rights and use a .eu domain.