How do I set the default email on linux?

Question

I've noticed in git and various scripts, there is a default user email address. This seems to default to user user@ubuntu.ubuntu-domain. Is there a way for me to set this to my ral email address?

Answer 1

Most programs use USER@HOSTNAME as the default email address, where USER is the username you are using and HOSTNAME is the fully qualified hostname of your computer. Some programs may use the environment variable $EMAIL if it's set, but there's no real standard for that so the only save way is to configure it for every program. Sad but true.

Answer 2

As Florian Diesch said, the username and machine hostname or localhost are often used to denote the default email address.

You can set your email address for git by adding your email address to .gitconfig:

[user]
    email = email@domain.com