GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 727583
Startup Applications: add support for running scripts or commands without .desktop files
Last modified: 2018-01-24 15:11:15 UTC
With the new Shell, gnome-session-properties are no longer provided and now we can add a startup program using gnome-tweak-tools but, if I want to add a startup command or a program not liste? For example if I want to add a conky? Am I supposed to fill a .desktop in .config/autostart as I do? Why it was removed? It' not really confortable to fill a .desktop. Can you implement gnome-tweak-tools with the possibility to add a command? Best regards
I agree with this. Manually editu .desktop files (just for adding a sleep, for example) is totally uncomfortable and really blocking for non-techy users. Please provvide again gnome-session-properties untill gnome-tweak-tool will be completed. Thanks, regards
graphical applications are really expected to install a desktop file nowadays. failing to do so is a bug in the application or in the packaging. if as you say, you are 'adding a sleep', you are already doing something that is entirely beyond the reach of non-techy users. I don't think doing it in an entry is much more comforting than e.g. doing it in vim.
I respectfully disagree . Sometimes you want to autostart non-graphical applications, sometimes it's not logic for an application to have a desktop file. Take conky, for example... what's the point of installing a desktop file for it? And about the edit of a desktop file, I really think that a simple "edit" button into tweak tool would really be much more confortable than doing it with vim/nano/gedit Finally, maybe you are right that applications are really expected to install a desktop file nowadays, but the state of the art is that many don't do it. I really like the desire of the GNOME project to leading the way and the progress, but sometimes it is useful to consider the reality and maybe gnome-session-properties could be keep alive for a little longer. Anyway, thank you very much for your reply and keep up with your awesome work!
Thanks for your answer but, think avout applications that will probably never had a .desktop, like conky or, in my case the need to launch gpaste because the extension has some problem. The most common use is probably a bash file put in autostart, why gnome wants to force users to fill a .desktop? What are the advantage to remove the possibility to make a command in autostart as we all have done for years? I understand that thing changes but, there're a lot of common user case with no .desktop and, gnome really wants user knows how to fill a .desktop, where to put it and make all by hands? Thanks and regards
According to me this is not an improvement but a feature regression. I think users shouldn't need to edit a .desktop file to automate launch of largely used tools like Conky, even if these are not part of Gnome's environment.
(In reply to comment #5) > According to me this is not an improvement but a feature regression. > > I think users shouldn't need to edit a .desktop file to automate launch of > largely used tools like Conky, even if these are not part of Gnome's > environment. Totally agree with you
There are things you might want to execute on GNOME startup that only fit into a bash script (which naturally doesn't have an according .desktop-file): e.g. disabling bluetooth, wwan module or touchpad (independent of whether it was enabled before shutdown). Writing an according bash script is easy, but creating a valid .desktop-file for startup is non-trivial since that is not, what most people do very often. So you will end up looking up the correct format for an autostart-desktop-file on the internet etc... That's tedious and could be avoided by adding an option in gnome-tweak-tool :)
With the current method, I can add gedit to my startup applications. Now, if I want to run gedit with specific options, I have to edit ~/.config/autostart/gedit.desktop to modify the Exec line. For me, it's not normal. It's nice to be able to choose graphics applications in a list, but we should also be able to select some specific programs or command lines if there is special needs.
Writing a .desktop file by hand just to launch a non-graphical process at session startup? Uhm. The target public of gnome-tweak-tool is already more advanced users that want to tweak GNOME. Executing the command that we want, with the parameters that we want, is something useful. Is it documented somewhere that a .desktop file must be written in ~/.config/autostart/ ? Is there an upstream GNOME administrator guide? If not, providing a GUI for that use case would ease things.
*** Bug 768885 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 763432 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 749825 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-tweaks/issues/47.