How can I set Plasma defaults for new users?

[Mrjcowman]

Hello all! I am setting up a computer lab for my dad's mechatronics class in a bid to get the most out of some weak laptops provided by the district. I decided kubuntu was the right balance between usability, customization, and lightweightness for this endeavor. I intend to authenticate these laptops using an OpenLDAP server running on a desktop so user data doesn't clog up the 20 GB drives these things come with.

As we'll be creating potentially as many as 300 users per year, I can't feasibly customize each individual one.

I want to change the default settings for new users, but I can't seem to track down the files to do so. Am I missing something obvious?

What I've tried so far:
I have a user account made on my first laptop with the desktop and settings arranged the way I'd like all future users to have. In particular, I have configured:

• a global theme
• application launcher menus
• the desktop background
• disabled the middle mouse to paste shortcut

I've attempted copying files from the user's .kde directory to /etc/skel/.kde, but none of those seem to have any real effect. The most success I had was copying almost the entire home folder into skel, but obviously that's not the right way to go about it, has some unintended side effects, and still doesn't change the desktop background.

KDE's documentation says to change files in /etc/skel, /usr/share, and /usr/local/share. I am quite lost in the share folders, and changing those that appear to be related to Plasma and themes and such hasn't had any visible effect on new users.

Thank you so much for your help!

[jlittle]

.kde dates back to KDE 3 and 4, it's mostly not used. KDE has become more compliant with desktop standards, which IME means mostly .config and .local.

The most success I had was copying almost the entire home folder into skel, but obviously that's not the right way to go about it...

Why not? Did you get everything, all the hidden files?

[Don B. Cilly]

You might try
cp -rf ./.[^.]* /etc/skel/ (from your ~)
which will copy all the hidden files.
The reason why you use ./.[^.]* is that ./ is the current directory and ../ the one above it, so copying .* would... make a mess :·)

[claydoh]

Basically. /etc/skel/ would have a set of directories and files that correspond to configuration files and locations in your $HOME.

So, one easy, quick way is to copy those hidden directories from a clean, fresh user account with only those desired changes made that you want, and nothing else changed, no unrelated programs opened, etc..
Then copy the .config and .local dirs to /etc/skel. This covers added wallpapers, if the images is stored in a directory in one of these locations - say ./local/share/wallpapers. If it is not, then you have to include the directory tree and file(s) in /etc/skel/ as well, say ~/Pictures/Wallpaper, or copy the file to the system wallpaper dir- /usr/share/wallpapers, and select the image from there in that user account.

Now, if you were to do some research, and some tests, you can determine which specific files/locations to mirror to /etc/skel, and not have to go through and create a 'clean' empty account