Xfce4 is far less viable to be used by sysadmins unless a system for centralized site wide configuration are deployed. We need a system where a sysadmin as a user can set up his xfce environment, and then copy his .config/xfce4 directory to some centralized place. All xfce apps should set its setting accoriding to the following precedence: 1. user config 2. system config 3. hardcoded defaults The apps should load the settings in reverse order, and override with settings of higher precedence where applicable. Possibly the kiosk mode should fit in here somewhere, giving the sysadmin the opportunity to select which settings could be overridden by the user and which could not. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. The lack of the proposed feature is by design. No steps necessary Actual Results: Centralized settings are not loaded Expected Results: Centralized should be loaded
This is to be solved with the new Xfconf daemon...
(In reply to comment #0) First, a sysadmin feature request is uncommon, at least to me :) This should(?) be one of your sysadmin projects and not our job! Your need sounds a lot like the XDG base directory specification. Dunno if at the time you opened the bug the specification already existed and that Xfce used it (version 4.2.2 did not IIRC), but the specification is in accord with the following: > 1. user config => $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. > 2. system config => $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. > 3. hardcoded defaults => $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. You have also the hard-coded values from the application that you can't change (until you hack the source…). > The apps should load the settings in reverse order, and override with > settings of higher precedence where applicable. That's the case, check the specification for the details. With this specification you can have different system-wide configuration directories like /etc/xdg-forthemasses, /etc/xdg-n00b, /etc/xdg-gamer, … and the user can also define its own centralized configuration data directory (but I can't imagine that, a user fits to only one personal configuration directory, unless he wants to try something out without b0rking his settings). On your systems all you have to do is to export the XDG_CONFIG_DIRS variable like that: export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg-default-xfce:/usr/local/etc/xdg:/etc/xdg and you get the picture. I think this can be closed :)