There are several plug-in dirs available: ~/.netscape/plugins /usr/local/lib/netscape/plugins /usr/lib/netscape/plugins /usr/lib/netscape/$VER/plugins /usr/lib/netscape/$VER/$BIN/plugins These dirs are only added to NS_PLUGIN_PATH if they exist. Also checked are the list of dirs above, with -libc# appended, where # depends on the libc that netscape was compiled against. The list can be added/modified by specifing variables in the environment file.