GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 302180
"Automatically save changes to session" doesn't make Groundhog Day possibility obvious
Last modified: 2021-06-14 18:21:08 UTC
Distribution/Version: Ubuntu 5.04 I might be dumb, but I expected the following from the "Automatically save changes to session" option in the Sessions control panel. * If it was turned on, each time I logged in I'd see the stuff I had open last time I logged out (like the Canon Cat). * If it was turned off, each time I logged in I'd see nothing open except my Startup Programs (like Windows and Mac OS). However, what turning it off *actually* did was get Gnome, whenever I logged in from then on, to open the things I had open the last time I logged out *before* changing the option. I think this setting is unreasonably difficult for people to understand, since to be useful it requires great planning -- open the items you want (e.g. none), *then* log out, *then* log in, *then* uncheck the checkbox. If the Groundhog Day option is retained, I suggest the checkbox be changed to three radio buttons and a push button, as follows. When logging in, open: (*) Everything you had open when you last logged out ( ) Your Startup Programs only ( ) The same items every time ( Remember Current Items ) That way people could arrange their session as they like, then just click a button, instead of going through the rigmarole of unchecking a checkbox then logging out then logging in again. "Remember Current Items" should not remember the Sessions control panel itself.
Additionally, when you deactivate this option, it has already recorded the session properties window in the session file. So that the next time you login it starts the session properties window again. The only way around this that I've found is to deactivate this option, then manually delete the session properties window from ~/.gnome2/session. I've also found that, even if I have no nautilus windows open when I turn off the save session option, the next time I login nautilus pops up a window with my home dir. To get around this I removed nautilus from ~/.gnome2/session and added it to my startup programs with the -n option, but this seems silly to me.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version of gnome-session, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.