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Where should the XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable be defined?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026142597 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

The XDG specification talks about the variable, but does not specify where it should be defined. Should we define it in , or is it the window manager's config file that needs to define this? I tried declaring it in /etc/environment as but that didn't work, as it seems that $HOME is not defined when is parsed. The only documentation I could find online was for Gentoo, where it was declared in I'm using Ubuntu. What would be the general solution for Debian based distros?

Error Output

XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"

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Fix for: Where should the XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable be defined?

Low Risk

You don't need to define it anywhere, unless you want to change the default. XDG Base Directory Specification clearly says: If is either not set or empty, a default equal to should be used. So it is redundant to define it to the default value. All compliant applications will already use But, if you do want to change the default in a Debian/Ubuntu system, a suitable (but not the only and possibly not the best) place is: For a system-wide change, affecting all users: For your user only:

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