Jon Dowland wrote:
It depends entirely on which session manager is used or which method of starting your session. If you create a ~/.xsession script which execs "startkde" you could specify the PATH before that and have it inherited by startkde and all subsequent processes. You then would need to instruct your display manager (KDM?) to execute this. With GDM, you would choose "default system session". I don't have KDM handy to check. Example .xsession: #!/bin/sh export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH startkde
On my system .[x|X]session doesn't exist by default, so kde (or whatever is chosen at the start-session menu) is getting started by some other mechanism. From my regular debian sarge installation I installed kdm so that I could have a user-friendly way for users to start a new session when an existing session is logged-in and locked. At the 'Start new session' option from the K menu the new user has the option to choose the type of session (KDE, Gnome etc) they want to run. I guess whatever is doing this session management bypasses 'conventional' X session startup methods.
The KDE sysadmin guide covers startup in this kind of detail: <http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/startup.php>. KDM calls startkde which calls kdeinit which is the magic X process and spawns most of everything else.
Thanks. -- John Stumbles