Practical Linux System Administration

Chapter 3. Customizing the User Experience

This chapter covers customizing the user experience for yourself and your users. System administrators are often called upon to make minor changes to a user’s environment or to the default environment for all users on the system (the latter is known as a global change). As long as any requested alterations and enhancements don’t compromise system security or violate corporate policy, there’s no harm in making changes that accommodate a user’s needs and workflows. Our duty as sysadmins is, after all, to the company first (and then to the user). The user is your customer.

Customizing the default user environment globally changes the environment for everyone on the system. However, you or the user can override some global parameters. You made such an override in Chapter 2 when you added the new umask to your user account. By setting your personal umask preference after the global one was set, you superseded the one set by the system. It’s a common practice for users to customize the environments they have control over.

This chapter covers customizing your and your users’ environments by editing key files in each user’s home directory. As a system administrator, you’ll also explore the “global” versions of these environment files that can be changed or added to, enabling you to create a specific experience for your users.

Altering Home Directory Options

In every user’s home directory, a few hidden files control most of the user’s environment. ...