If I create a new Python file gedit uses Tabs as default for indentation.
I am sure I could find a way to configure gedit to change this to four spaces.
But I have a different goal.
I would like change this for all Ubuntu users for the future.
How to change this for all future Ubuntu users (world-wide)?
To make this the default for all future users in the world, you would need to go with a feature request, in one of several forms:
[Wishlist] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebugThen you would have to wait for it to be (1) accepted and (2) implemented...
it is not up to you.
You could contribute by developing the change (item 2 above). It may be not really hard.
Note: Given that the default behavior is often times a matter of taste (and I think this is one such case), you might likely have to settle for what was posted in the Original answer below.
Sources / related:
gedit preferences, like other GNOME settings, are generally stored via the GSettings API, which is an implementation of the DConf specification.
This stores the settings in a binary database.
The way to read from / write to this is via gsettings get / gsettings set, or dconf dump / dconf load.
So for only the tabs-to-spaces you would use
$ gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor insert-spaces true
$ gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor tabs-size 4
For all gedit settings you could use
$ dconf dump /org/gnome/gedit/preferences/editor/ > gedit-settings.ini
$ dconf load /org/gnome/gedit/preferences/editor/ < gedit-settings.ini
(with a different user).
To make this the default for all future users in your system, you can set system-wide dconf settings by storing them in a text file under /etc/dconf/db/local.d and running dconf update.
Only include here the settings you need.
As opposed to the EDITed part, you have control over this.
Sources / related:
