<chapter id="profiles">
<title>Profiles</title>
<para>A profile is a collection of default settings and restrictions
that can be applied to either individual users or groups of users.</para>

<para>The KDE desktop environment as well as all KDE applications use
a specific
<ulink url="http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/fsh.php#dir_structure">directory structure</ulink>
to lookup configuration settings and various other information.
KDE knows about several 
<ulink url="http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/fsh.php#dir_location">locations</ulink>
for these directory structures.
All the information and 
<ulink url="http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/config_file.php">configuration settings</ulink>
found in the various locations are
<ulink url="http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/config_file.php#cascading">combined</ulink>
before they are used. 
<ulink url="http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/config_file.php#lock_down">Lock down</ulink>
features control whether settings in the user's home folder ($KDEHOME or ~/.kde)
are taken into account or not.
</para>

<para>
A profile consists of a standard KDE directory structure in a custom location with
settings and information chosen by you.
</para>

<para>&kiosktool; lets you chose in which location
a profile should be stored. Information about available profiles is stored in
the file &etc_kderc;.
</para>

<para>It is recommended to store all profiles under a single
directory. In this case the &etc_kderc; file only needs to contain a reference to this
single directory and KDE and &kiosktool; will automatically pick up all profiles stored
under this directory. See the <xref linkend="settings" /> chapter for more information.
</para>

</chapter>
