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