[MrJohz]

You would normally use both this and a project-specific gitignore.

The project-specific file is for stuff that should be shared amongst all users of a particular project. So for a Node project you might have `node_modules` in there, for a Python project you might have `.venv` and `*.pyc`. If your project uses env files, you might have a line like `.env` in there for that.

Meanwhile, the global gitignore is for stuff that's specific to your system. If you're on MacOS, you might have an entire for `.DS_Store`, or if you use Vim a lot you might have an entry for `*~` files (i.e. vim backup files). This is stuff that's specific to you.

Git can then combine the project-specific ignores (located in the project respiratory) and your user-specific ignores (located in your global gitignore file), and ignores anything that matches either case.