kde settings files / packages - debugging and changing user settings as a distribution

[Patrick Schleizer]

Hi!

Several packages for changing kde settings as a Linux distribution have
been created by me. [1] For example the kde-sounds-off package [2], that
disables kde system sounds by default.

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However, creating such kde settings files is quite difficult debugging
wise. Debugging as in creating a kde config file and really testing it.

Let's say the related file is:

~/.kde/share/config/krandrrc

For redistribution we later may put this file into:

/usr/share/whonix-gw-kde-desktop-conf/share/config/krandrrc

So to test this...
1. Create a config file you want to test in
/usr/share/whonix-gw-kde-desktop-conf/share/config/krandrrc
2. Create a new user account "user2" or so
3. Login as user2
4. See if it worked
5. Logout as user2
5. If it didn't work, delete user2
6. make sure the /home/user2 folder has been wiped or at least wipe
/home/user2/.kde/share/config/krandrrc
7. go back to 1. if necessary

This is because user settings always overrule distribution defaults. And
because once logged in, that user file has been created, so
distributions have no more chance to change user settings (unless huge
hacks are invented or kde gets patched).

Do you know a simpler way to debug if these config files would work?

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Another complication... When you want to for example experiment with
editing ~/.kde/share/config/krandrrc (maybe krandrrc would work, but
others won't) you can't do this while kde is running. Stop it first.
"sudo service kdm stop". Edit that file. Start it again. "sudo service
kdm start" See if it worked. Otherwise kde might ignore the changed
settings file or even overrule it. Any simpler way than that?

-----

The package description contains a limitation. "This package only takes
effect for newly created user accounts. Not for existing user accounts.
This package is most useful to help Linux distribution maintainers
setting divergent defaults." In other words...

Let's say 1) a user installs kde, 2) logs in, 3) ends up with default
settings, i.e. system sounds enabled by default. Now, 4) the user
installs the kde-sounds-off package. It wouldn't have any effect,
because settings files in ~/.kde/... already say "sound enabled".
Anything related to sound in /usr/share/kde-sounds-off would be ignored
for existing user accounts.

Is there any way around this? Can distributions somehow still change
user settings? I mean, just apply them when for example the
kde-sounds-off package gets installed. After that, users are free to
overrule settings by kde-sounds-off. And that's totally fine.

Any way to accomplish that?

Cheers,
Patrick

[1] https://github.com/Whonix?query=kde-
[2] https://github.com/Whonix/kde-sounds-off
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