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Environment variables

Some important environment variables used by KDE:

$ KDEDIR

Has to be set if KDEDIRS is not set and has to point to the root of the KDE installation tree. Allows KDE to find its data like icons, menus and libraries.

$ KDEDIRS

Overrides KDEDIR and allows you to specify multiple directories where KDE searches for its data. Useful if you want or have to install some programs to a different prefix than the rest of KDE.

$KDEHOME

If not set, KDE uses ~/.kde as the directory where personal data is stored.

$ KDEROOTHOME

If not set, KDE uses ~root/.kde as the directory for root's personal data. Was introduced to prevent KDE from accidently overwriting user data with root permissions when the user runs a KDE program after switching with su to root.

$ KDEWM

If the KDEWM environment variable has been set, then it will be used as KDE's window manager within the startkde script instead of KWin.

$ KDE_LANG

Overrides the KDE language configuration, e.g. KDE_LANG=fr kprogram & starts a program with French translation if the necessary files are installed.

$ KDE_MULTIHEAD

Set this variable to true to indicate that KDE is running on a multi-head system.

$ KDE_FORK_SLAVES

(Since KDE 3.2.3) Set this variable to spawn KIO-slaves directly from the application process itself. By default KIO-slaves are spawned using klauncher / kdeinit . This option is useful if the KIO-slave should run in the same environment as the application. This can be the case with Clearcase.

$ KDE_HOME_READONLY

Set this variable to indicate that your home directory is mounted as read-only.

$ KDE_NO_IPV6

(Since KDE 3.2.3) - Set this variable to disable IPv6 support and IPv6 DNS lookups.

$ KDE_IS_PRELINKED

(Since KDE 3.2) - Set this variable to indicate that you have prelinked your KDE binaries and libraries. This will turn off kdeinit .

$ KDE_UTF8_FILENAMES

If this environment variable is set, KDE assumes all filenames are in UTF-8 encoding regardless of the current C locale.

$ KDE_FULL_SESSION

(Since KDE 3.2) Automatically set to true by KDE startup, it is used by e.g. Konqueror to know if it should consider remaining in memory for future re-use when being closed. If not set, Konqueror will exit after being closed (e.g. KDE su does that, it's also useful for debugging).

$ KDESYCOCA

Allows you to specify the path and the name of the generated KDE system configuration cache file.

$ KDETMP

Allows to specify another path than /tmp where KDE stores its temporary files.

$ KDEVARTMP

Allows to specify another path than /var/tmp where KDE stores its variable files.

$ XDG_DATA_HOME

(Since KDE 3.2) Defines the base directory relative to which user-specific data files should be stored. Default is $ HOME /.local/share

$ XDG_DATA_DIRS

(Since KDE 3.2) Defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for data files in addition to the $ XDG_DATA_HOME base directory. Default is /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/

KDE adds locations from $ KDEDIRS and profiles as well. Used for .desktop and .directory menu files. .desktop files under $ XDG_DATA_DIRS /applications. .directory files under $XDG_DATA_DIRS/desktop-directories

$ XDG_CONFIG_HOME

(KDE 3.2) - Defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. Default is $ HOME /.config.

$ XDG_CONFIG_DIRS

(KDE 3.2) - Defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for configuration files in addition to the $ XDG_CONFIG_HOME base directory. The default is /etc/xdg KDE adds locations from $ KDEDIRS and profiles as well. Used by .menu descriptions in $ XDG_CONFIG_DIRS /menus.




 
 
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