Hi Kevin, | /bin/sh is probably a link for /bin/bash, which means the /bin/sh | executing startkde is bash, started as a login shell, thus sourcing | .bash_profile But, I don't think /usr/bin/startkde sources .bash_profile . Its first line is "#!/bin/sh". Therefore, "/bin/sh /usr/bin/startkde" is what is executed. (This is confirmed by the output from "ps -ef".) In that case, this shell is not a login shell. You can confirm this by writing a little test script like this: #!/bin/sh echo $HELLO_KEVIN (Remember I have this env.var. set in my .bash_profile .) Only when the first line is "#!/bin/bash -l", my .bash_profile is sourced. (As an aside, even "#!/bin/sh -l" doesn't source .bash_profile. Even though sh is a symlink to bash, it seems to behave differently according to the name by which it's invoked.) Groping around, I seem to find a clue. /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession has these lines if [ -f $HOME/.bash_profile ]; then . $HOME/.bash_profile Reading /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc, I got an impression that /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession is the script that is executed when you chose KDE, Gnome, etc. The explanation of Xsession in /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc reads # The program which is run as the user which logs in. It is # supposed to interpret the session argument (see SessionsDirs) and # start an appropriate session according to it. So, it will be given the name of the session (kde, gnome, etc.) that the user has chosen. In turn, /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession seems to pass the name on to /etc/X11/Xsession, which ultimately determines what to invoke, it seems. If my (very sketchy) analysis is correct, which I'm not sure at all, it's KDM that sources my .bash_profile . If so, when was this change made? I clearly remember that my .bash_profile wasn't sourced when I first installed this machine, which was last summer or fall. Cheers, Ryo ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.