The Desktop folder contains the icon files as well as all of the folders that are 

presented on the desktop. 

KDE uses ASCII based text files for all its configuration options. This makes it 

easy to configure KDE using scripts and editors. Three main files are used to 

configure the desktop:

kdeglobals 

kdesktoprc

kickerrc

Red Hat 9.0 places these files in the /usr/share/config directory. Other 

distributions may place these files in different locations. These files contain the 

default settings used to personalize the KDE desktop for new users. Thus any 

changes that are made to these files will be inherited by all new users created 

after making the changes. See 5.1,  KDE Kiosk framework  on page 90, for more 

details.

Desktop personalization: GNOME containment model

As with the KDE desktop, personalization data used by Gnome is stored in 

folders that are created as a directory structure within the user's home directory. 

The desktop structure within GNOME is different than that of KDE. In GNOME, 

this information is contained within this directory:

/home/username/.gnome desktop

Icons are handled in the same way as they are in KDE. This means that they are 

ASCII text files containing information that defines the application behavior when 

the icon is launched. You can save them in the /home//.gnome desktop 

directory to populate the desktop.

The task of making general configuration changes to the GNOME desktop is very 

different than in KDE. KDE uses simple and easy to edit ASCII files. The 

GNOME desktop uses a database of Extensible Markup Language (XML) files to 

build and customize all of its settings. These files are numerous and can be 

found in this location:

/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/ directory.

This directory contains subdirectories for each portion of the GNOME desktop 

environment, as shown here:

/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/accessibility

/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/applications

/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/background

/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/file_views

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Linux Client Migration Cookbook   A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop