stow's approach of using symlinks is extremely limiting. For example, it means you can't have templates (for small machine-to-machine differences and secrets) or encrypted files. chezmoi does have a symlink mode, like stow, but using symlinks has multiple downsides: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions...

chezmoi was actually inspired by Puppet, not stow.

Source: me, I'm the author of chezmoi.