# Shared Plugins

Plugins may be used by a range of different hosts. However, the host needs to be able to find the plugins. Hosts vary, however the recommended method uses the environment variable `LADSPA_PATH`. If present, this should contain a colon-separated path indicating directories that should be searched (in order) when loading plugin types.

It is recommended for standard Linux distributions such as RedHat, that this plugin path should be `/home/<user>/.ladspa:/usr/local/lib/ladspa:/usr/lib/ladspa`. Plugins can then be installed into `/usr/local/lib/ladspa/` or `/usr/lib/ladspa/`.

You may wish to add a line such as the following to your .bash_profile login file (if you use Bash): `export LADSPA_PATH=$LADSPA_PATH:/home/<user>/.ladspa:/usr/local/lib/ladspa:/usr/lib/ladspa`

To list the plugins that can be found on your `LADSPA_PATH`, run the `listplugins` program.