KDE System Administration

This section provides system administrators who are rolling out new or managing existing KDE deployments in their organization with the information they need to do so effectively.

File System

Configuration File Syntax: KDE configuration files are text-based. They contain groups of key-value pairs. This section explains their syntax. It covers:

localisation,
shell-variables,
complete or partial lock-down of configuration files,
editor utilities,
other advanced features.

KDE Hierarchy: This article describes how KDE uses the filesystem, where it looks for files and where it stores them. It explains how to change these locations. There is also a brief overview of the default settings used by major OS vendors.

XDG Hierarchy: Supplementing the KDE filesystem hierarchy, KDE also uses various directories, as defined by XDG specifications on freedesktop.org. This article documents the paths used and their purposes.

Desktop Sessions

Environment Variables: A variety of environment variables documented in this article are available to influence aspects of KDE and its applications' runtime behavior.

Desktop Startup Sequence: During startup KDE starts the visible desktop components as well as several services that run in the background. This article describes the startup sequence, gives an overview of some of the services started and explains how to make changes.

Login Manager: The KDE Display Manager (KDM) provides the services commonly associated with a login manager. The first contact your users have with a KDE system is usually the KDM login screen. This section covers the basics of how setting up KDM, plus advanced topics such as remote login, automatic login, and more.

User & Group Profiles

Introduction to Kiosk: The Kiosk framework provides a set of features that makes it possible to easily and powerfully define and restrict the capabilities of a KDE environment based on user and group credentials. In addition to an introductory overview, this article covers configuration setting lock down, action and resource restrictions, assigning profiles to users and groups and more.

Kiosk Keys: This document details known global and application specific kiosk keys for action, resource and url restrictions making it a handy reference guide when setting up a Kiosk profile.

Additional Resources: Links to tools, mailing lists and additional documentation relevant to user and group profiles in KDE.

Tools

KioskTool: A graphical application that helps manage KDE Kiosk user and group profiles.

Desktop Sharing: KDE's Desktop Sharing capabilities make it possible to share your desktop remotely with others. Alongside numerous other uses, this feature is a great enabler for support staff who give direct assistance to users calling them.

Using KDE Dialogs in Shell Scripts: You can use KDialog shell scripts to show various KDE dialogs. This gives you seamless integration of your own custom GUI enhancements.