Where kde saves user settings ?

[Duncan]

John_82 posted on Fri, 17 Mar 2017 13:44:58 +0000 as excerpted:

> Can anyone tell me where kde stores things like
> 
> Start button menu content.
> Task bar content.
> The state a user left when they logged out so that windows will mostly
> be restored etc.
> 
> Think I have covered all that would be needed but maybe there are
> others?
> 
> It's pretty obvious where some apps keep their states but I'm having
> problems finding out where kde stores similar things.

That's actually a broader question than you likely realize, with an even
broader answer as the locations have changed over the years and kde
versions, and frameworks-5-based apps now use the standard freedesktop.org
specified locations, while kde4-based apps (of which there are still some
around that haven't migrated yet and that might be dropped in a year or
two when kdelibs4 goes EOL if they still haven't migrated) use the old kde
location.

The legacy kde4 location was in $KDEHOME, $HOME/.kde if $KDEHOME was unset
(tho some distros changed that to .kde4 or so), ~/.kde if $HOME wasn't set
either.

Inside that .kde, share was the major subdir, with the two major subdirs
under share being config and apps.  The config subdir had individual
config files.  The apps subdir was for apps with enough data/files to
justify their own subdir beneath apps.  Generally, that was app-data, not
specifically config, but sometimes the line isn't exactly clear.

So for kde4-based apps, try looking in ~/.kde/share/ in both the config
and apps subdirs.

For plasma5 and frameworks5 based apps, as I said, the freedesktop.org
speced locations are normally used.  That's $XDG_CONFIG_HOME for config,
and $XDG_DATA_HOME for app data.  If those aren't set... well, let me
point you to the freedesktop.org website for the specs and you can read it
yourself, but try ~/.config and ~/.local/share .

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/

That has lots of different specs listed, many of which may be interesting
reading (they certainly do here), but finding the specific one you're
after might be confusing due to the number of them.  So more specifically
of interest here, try the basedir spec:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/basedir-spec/


Meanwhile, the more kde-specific parallels for system administrators and
more technical users are:

https://userbase.kde.org/Special:MyLanguage/KDE_System_Administration

That's the general page, with the topic specific pages:

https://userbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/KDE_Filesystem_Hierarchy

https://userbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/XDG_Filesystem_Hierarchy

https://userbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/Environment_Variables


As I said, likely a rather more complex question, and answer, than
you anticipated. =8^0


-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman