Onboard offers the possibility to set values for its various configuration options by placing an Onboard custom system configuration file on the system. This is especially interesting for distributions that want Onboard to appear on a clean system with settings matching their desktop.

Onboard reads the custom configuration file the first time it is launched. The configuration settings of the configuration file will remain active as long as the user does not override them with new settings. For example, if the user moves or resizes the Onboard window, the new values for position and size will override those stored in the system configuration file. Moreover, the new values are automatically stored as the user's settings and used afterwards.

If Onboard is started from a script or from the command line with parameters, these values do also override the values specified in the system configuration file. The values of the parameters will be stored automatically in the user's settings and used afterwards.

A sample system configuration file comes with the Onboard package and should have been installed on your system. It is named onboard-defaults.conf.example. It contains a lot of comments about how to use it and what parameters are supported. In order to make use of a system configuration file, simply create a copy of the example file in the same directory, keep the name of the example file without the .example suffix and edit the contents according to your wishes.