The other thing not being mentioned is that sometimes logging into GNOME will source .profile or .bash_profile (I forget which). This can be used to make sure that environment variables are set at the top-level (to be inherited by all sub-processes of the GNOME environment). Mostly this is useful for things like $PATH (which programs like gmrun make use of).
Yes, this is standard and useful behaviour. When I started using OS X, it really confused me that 1) it didn't source .profile on login 2) it sourced .profile (instead of .bashrc) whenever I opened a new terminal.
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The other thing not being mentioned is that sometimes logging into GNOME will source .profile or .bash_profile (I forget which). This can be used to make sure that environment variables are set at the top-level (to be inherited by all sub-processes of the GNOME environment). Mostly this is useful for things like $PATH (which programs like gmrun make use of).
Yes, this is standard and useful behaviour. When I started using OS X, it really confused me that 1) it didn't source .profile on login 2) it sourced .profile (instead of .bashrc) whenever I opened a new terminal.
Yeah, many terminal emulators (like Terminal.app) are configured to run login shells.