https://toast.ooo/u/cm0002 posted on Apr 1, 2026 21:57
Fedora rejects something from systemd
date: April 1
source: Phoronix
Yeah no, good try tho. Had me hopeful for 6 seconds.
Fedora Discourse thread (started on 1 March 2026) : https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f45-change-proposal-use-systemd-for-managing-per-user-environment-variables-selfcontained/182885 Fedora devel-announce post (sent on 10 March 2026) : https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VOMOY2CBIY25324AFD52UAZVPTQUOIRN/ Proposal on Pagure (opened on 25 March 2026) : https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/3582 Proposal on Fedora wiki (Created on 10 March 2026) : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/UseSystemdForManagingPerUserEnvironmentVariables
At the risk of being serious, there’s really no good way to set user environment variables. (It’s been a while since I last checked, so I might be wrong)
PAM used to have an equivalent to their /etc/environment for users, but that was deprecated or maybe removed last I checked.
Systemd user environment variables don’t apply in a shell context
.bashrc only works if you use bash as login shell and I’m not sure if it applies everywhere. Sure, I can set stuff in the shell I use, but it feels weird to modify my shell in order to change global environment variables.
Yeah it’s such a mess. Last I tried I had to set my variable in like 3 different places and it still didn’t apply everywhere I expected it to.