KDE confirguration directories query

[Kevin Kofler]

Roderick Johnstone wrote:
> Could someone please explain to me the difference between the usage of
> the directories:
> 
> /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-profile/default/share/config
> and
> /usr/share/config
> 
> in terms of locating resource/configuration files for KDE.

There are 4 directories configuration files are looked for by default in 
Fedora, in decreasing order of priority:
1. per user: ~/.kde/share/config (default location KDE writes settings to)
2. per system: /etc/kde (reserved for the local sysadmin, empty by default)
3. distro defaults: /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-profile/default/share/config
   (installed by the kde-settings package, overrides some upstream defaults)
4. upstream defaults: /usr/share/config (used by upstream for some packages)
If none of those 4 locations set a setting, the default hardcoded in the 
source code is used.

So in short, the difference is that /usr/share/config contains settings 
provided by the KDE project (some apps use this mechanism instead of 
hardcoding the defaults in the code), /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-
profile/default/share/config contains additional settings provided by us 
Fedora KDE packagers (often overriding a default from upstream).

If you want to make your own systemwide settings, it is recommended not to 
touch the files under /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-
profile/default/share/config nor /usr/share/config (which are owned by our 
packages and not marked as editable config files), but to put them into 
/etc/kde, which is reserved for that purpose.

I hope this clears up everything.

        Kevin Kofler