Home / ubuntu / Questions / 75978
Accepted
user3215
Asked: 2011-11-06 22:18:47 +0800 CST

How to customize system preferences settings for all users

  • 772

Does anybody know how to apply a customized user settings to other existing or new users?. Something like a customized preferences settings for system wide so that everybody posses those settings and below will explain in clear what I actually ment.

On every machine I will install the following:

Eclipse
Mysql Query Browser and Admin
Mysql Workbench
Oracle VirtualBox
Thunderbird
-----------
-----------
-----------

If I install them by apt, this will automatically create shortcuts in Applications but when I build them from source or extract the tar ball, I will have to add New Item at it's relevant place going to System-->Preferences-->Main Menu to make them available as a shortcuts and this settings are applied only for the account I login and perform them. How could I make this preferences settings for complete system wide which applies for all users? or if there is a way to apply a customized user settings to other users will also be ok. Any hint please?

Thank you!

customization

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There are many different kinds of system preferences that are stored in different ways. So answering your broad question is difficult, but here's the answer to the specific question:

    When you use the menu editor to create new shortcuts, it works by creating desktop files which get placed in the user's/home/$USER/.local/share/applications/ directory. This will only add it to the menu of the user used to create the menu item. For the menu item to be accesable system-wide, you can put the desktop file in /usr/local/share/applications/

    You could find the desktop file created by the menu editor and move it, or you could just create a file under /usr/local/share/applications/ manually. Here's a sample file, terminator.desktop:

    [Desktop Entry]
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Utility;
Comment=Multiple terminals in one window
Exec=terminator
Icon=terminator
Name=Terminator
Type=Application

    Replace the values with those appropriate for your application.

    • 1