Default Desktop and input method setting in Edubuntu

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Elanjelian Venugopal wrote:

> Whenever I create a new user, it appears, I need to yet again set the
> everything from the desktop, to resolution, to default fonts, to input
> method. (The default language is Tamil, and SCIM is used to type in
> Tamil characters.) Typically, this takes about 5 minutes each. There
> are around 400 students in the school, and I'd need to create that
> many users.

You can be pretty certain that what happens when you make the setting is
that you are creating or modifying a file in the user's home directory.  At
a guess, this is probably somewhere in .gconf or gconfd, though I don't
know gnome that well.  If you can work out what change(s) are made, there
are two approaches:

a. You could automate making the same change for future users in a script.

b. You could try and set the default in /etc/gconf/ to be your chosen
   settings, thereby avoiding setting per user.

Here's what I'd suggest you do first:

1. Create two new users, eg. user1, user2.
2. Login as user1.  Wait 120 seconds.
3. Make one change you want.
4. From a command line run:
	find ~ -mtime -2
   this will tell you what files in the home directory have been modified
   in the past 2 minutes.
5. Compare the resulting file(s) in user1's and user2's home dirs to see
   what change was made.  This might be editing a file or creating a new
   file.
6. Follow steps 2-5 for each other change, noting what file(s) get modified
   and how.

Once you have this information, you can look at options (a) and (b) above.

Gavin