Index: lib/gears/filesystem.lua
--- lib/gears/filesystem.lua.orig
+++ lib/gears/filesystem.lua
@@ -103,7 +103,7 @@ end
 --- Get the data dirs according to the XDG basedir specification.
 -- @treturn table the data dirs (XDG_DATA_DIRS) with a slash at the end of each entry.
 function filesystem.get_xdg_data_dirs()
-    local xdg_data_dirs = os.getenv("XDG_DATA_DIRS") or "/usr/share:/usr/local/share"
+    local xdg_data_dirs = os.getenv("XDG_DATA_DIRS") or "${LOCALBASE}/share:/usr/local/share"
     return gtable.map(
         function(dir) return dir .. "/" end,
         gstring.split(xdg_data_dirs, ":"))