Starting banshee with only the "--hide" parameter has no effect. I'm not sure it's supposed to have any.

If banshee is already running, launching "banshee-1 --hide" seems to hide the window but it re-appears immediately (it just flickers).

ditto for --no-present 

*** Bug 549576 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Confirming in 1.4.1. Those arguments still have no effect beside window flickering.

I've recently changed my wallpaper to a motivational one ("Do your work. Don't be stupid." - see http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details.php?id=1223 ), but having Banshee automatically started right after login makes the wallpaper invisible after launching the machine. I hope this bug will be squashed soon :)

Created attachment 129137 [details] [review]
first iteration

This patch partially fixes the bug:

If Banshee already runs, starting it with "hide" or "no-present" now hides the window. 

However, if it's not running, both arguments have no effect. I'm not sure how to fix it in this case, I will appreciate any pointers.

Basically, I need to get the main window at startup and hide it. When Banshee is not running, the window is returned using:

IClientWindow window = DBusServiceManager.FindInstance<IClientWindow> ("/ClientWindow");

This is called from src/Clients/Halie/Halie/Client.cs:Client.HandleWindowCommands(). I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for the Nereid client.

I don't think calling window.Hide () is appropriate for the "no-present" command.  This patch doesn't do anything else, does it?

> Basically, I need to get the main window at startup and hide it.

If it can't be done, maybe it would be better to set a flag somewhere and use it in a place the window is shown for the first time?

I have a patch almost ready to fix --hide --present, including at startup.

This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.