Linux environment variables

System-wide¶

/etc/profile is sourced by all POSIX-compatible shells upon login.
Files inside the /etc/profile.d/ directory will also be sourced.

Bash¶

~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile for login bash instances.
~/.bashrc for every interactive bash instance.

Zsh¶

~/.zshenv for environment variables in all zsh instances.
~/.zprofile for every login zsh instance.
~/.zshrc for every interactive zsh instance.

Note

zsh does not source ~/.profile by default because of the difference between bash and zsh syntaxes. You can add this line to ~/.zprofile or ~/.zshenv to make zsh shells read `~/.profile correctly.

~/.zshenv

skip_global_compinit=1
test -r ${HOME}/.profile && emulate sh -c 'source ${HOME}/.profile'

X Window¶

~/.xinitrc is sourced by startx.
~/.xprofile is sourced by display managers (e.g., GDM, SDDM)

Systemd and Wayland¶

~/.config/environment.d/*.conf: sourced by systemd. Also, they are used in Wayland sessions where xinitrc and xprofile are not available.