Hi, assuming you are running bash as shell, there are the startup files for login and shell start. >From man bash:
/etc/profile The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells /etc/bash.bashrc The systemwide per-interactive-shell startup file ~/.bash_profile The personal initialization file, executed for login shells ~/.bashrc The individual per-interactive-shell startup file I have most of my personal preferences in ~/.bashrc . Stuff like: export LC_COLLATE="C" export HISTCONTROL="ignoredups" export PS1='\u@\h:\W> ' So i guess it would be a good place to set export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64" Have a nice day :) Thomas