Settings that don't stick

[MR ZenWiz]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 28 December 2010 18:48, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On my Dell workstation, if I change a setting in an app, say which
>> mode to run in the calculator, it remembers the next time I run the
>> calculator that it was last in Programming mode (for example).  On my
>> home-built desktop, it never remembers any such settings and always
>> runs in the minimal calculator mode unless I change it every time.
>> Why would this be the case?
>
> I wonder if this is a permissions issue.  I think those settings are
> generally held in the hidden files and folders in the users home
> directory.  Perhaps one or more have somehow become owned by root for
> example and so cannot be written to by the user.
>
I did some poking around, but there don't appear to be any files of
this nature at all - either I own the files or the ones that I don't
own are root files that make sense (like some scripts I have in my bin
dir that are for root running only).

> What happens if you make a new user on the problematic machine, do the
> new users settings work ok?
>
I keep forgetting to try this - will make an effort this weekend.

Thanks.