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Linux Desktop Hacks
book

Linux Desktop Hacks

by Nicholas Petreley, Jono Bacon
March 2005
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
342 pages
15h 55m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Desktop Hacks
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Chapter 9, Administration and Automation
#76 Take Control of New User Setups
HACK
Improve What Is Already There
If you have fine-tuned your personal settings in one or more of these files
and believe others would benefit from changes you make for your own per-
sonal preferences, edit the existing /etc/skel to use default settings taken from
your personal settings. Take a look at “Colorize Files in Your Pager”
[Hack
#15]
. This particular hack redefines some command aliases so that you can
see a color listing of files in your pager. All it takes is to replace the existing
alias definitions (usually found in .bashrc) to read something more like this:
alias ls="ls --color"
alias less="less -R"
Make those changes in the /etc/skel/.bashrc file, and all new users will bene-
fit from the hack, assuming your users are as pleased with the idea as you
are.
Create Application Defaults
The /etc/skel directory is also an ideal place to put customizations for indi-
vidual programs, as long as those configuration files do not include user-
names or paths to user directories. It’s quite easy to find out if a file or
directory has hardcoded references to a username or user directory. For
example, assuming your username is
carlotta, try this command in your
home directory:
$ grep -r carlotta .kde
You might be shocked at how many configuration files, among other things,
show up with the username hardcoded. You can’t
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596009119Supplemental ContentCatalog PageErrata