# User Specific Environment Variables for the Desktop

The usual place to set environment variables is `~/.bashrc`, but these variables influence only shell sessions, not all desktop programs.

To influence all user spawned processes, you might add one or more `*.conf` files into
`~/.config/environment.d/`. 

Following example (`~/.config/environment.d/swiss.conf`) keeps all texts in original English, but changes date/date/paper sizes and other formating elements to what is usual locally in Switzerland:

```
LC_ADDRESS=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_CH.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_NUMERIC=de_CH.UTF-8
```
See the [manual](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/environment.d.html#Configuration%20Format) about more details of the configuration format.

Also be aware you need to have these files locally in your home directory, you cannot use links to your `U:`-drive from the ["Partially Shared Home"-feature](partially_shared_home) because they are not availabe so early in the session setup process.

Note this does not work on RHEL7.