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How to ensure that all new users have the same profile settings as the current user? I am using Ubuntu 12.04.

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    What do you mean by same profile? Is is same configuration because each user must have a different profile.
    – Anwar
    Sep 11, 2012 at 9:41
  • I mean that each new user will have same appearance (unity, launcher, defualt language,...). Ive read once before to copy .bashrc from the current user to /etc/skel. Is this true? what could i do more?
    – user61928
    Sep 11, 2012 at 9:48

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Yeah use /etc/skel/. Anything you shove in there will be copied out to a new user profile when you create them.

The most meaningful way to use this in practice (for deep customisation) is to create a user, customise their account to how you want all the others to look and then copy things in that profile out to /etc/skel/.

One note: a lot of applications will create home directories on their first run. Because of that it's important you only run the things you want to customise under your template user account. Otherwise you'll end up contaminating things that don't need to be there.

Second note: You may need to update the template over time as default applications change. It's not a long process so as long as you spend 10 minutes testing a new profile each release upgrade, you should be fine.

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    @OLI... Which things i must copy ?!
    – user61928
    Sep 11, 2012 at 10:09
  • That depends on what you customise. You could just copy everything from your template user account (that's why note it's important to only run the things you want to customise). You could probably trim things down but I can't think of anything immediately obvious as to why copying everything would be a bad idea.
    – Oli ♦
    Sep 11, 2012 at 10:11
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    @OLI...i dont get it.. do you mean i could copy all files in the initial home directory to /etc/skel or just .bashrc or what? could you be specific more please
    – user61928
    Sep 11, 2012 at 10:13
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    @OLI... thanks very much i also found this link: askubuntu.com/questions/83532/… It seems perfect
    – user61928
    Sep 11, 2012 at 10:16
  • @maythux Yeah anything in /etc/skel/ gets copied into each new profile when it's generated.
    – Oli ♦
    Sep 11, 2012 at 10:18

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