The AIX operating system provides various commands and initialization files that enable you to customize the behavior and the appearance of your user environment to your preferences.
Some of the default resources of the applications you use on your system can also be customized. Defaults are initiated by the program at startup. When you change the defaults, you must exit and then restart the program to see the new defaults in effect.
Common Desktop Environment 1.0: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide provides detailed information about customizing the behavior and appearance of the AIX Common Desktop Environment.
This section discusses:
User Environment and System Information
System Initialization Files Overview
Customizing the InfoExplorer ASCII Program
Beginning with AIX Version 4.2, the operating system is designed to support the X/Open UNIX95 Specification for portability of UNIX-based operating systems. Many new interfaces, and some current ones, have been added or enhanced to meet this specification. Beginning with Version 4.2, AIX is even more open and portable for applications.
At the same time, compatibility with previous AIX releases is preserved. This is accomplished by the creation of a new environment variable, which can be used to set the system environment on a per-system, per-user, or per-process basis.
The default AIX environment is one that maintains compatibility with previous AIX releases. To obtain an environment designed to conform to the UNIX95 specification, the environment variable XPG_SUS_ENV must be assigned the value ON. If XPG_SUS_ENV is set to any other value, or is unset, the default AIX behavior will be used.
When XPG_SUS_ENV is set, every program in that environment will operate in the UNIX95-specified operating system environment. It is possible that some applications compiled for the AIX environment (perhaps for an earlier version of AIX) will not operate correctly when XPG_SUS_ENV is set.