GNOME 2 allows one to either save the session automatically or manually (i.e. save the session as it looks right now). This is a nice feature because it restores the various desktop states between logins (and system restarts):
- which apps were open
- where (physically) on the desktop were they open
- what specific window sizes were these apps set to
Looking around, I can’t find the feature in GNOME 3? Did I not look hard enough?
Answers:
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Method 1
Try using dconf Editor, here are the steps
- Open dconf Editor
- Goto org/gnome/gnome-session
- Check the property called “auto_save_session“
The description says “If enabled, gnome-session will save the session automatically.”
If you don’t have dconf Editor installed, the setting can also be changed via the command line with:
gsettings set org.gnome.SessionManager auto-save-session true
Good luck!
Method 2
Normally you would Alt-F2 to run gnome-session-properties, and select “Automatically remember running applications when logging out” under the Options tab.
However, it is broken at the moment. There is a bug filed:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647359
Method 3
Sadly in 11.10
gnome-session-properties
doesn’t offer any Option tab with Auto Save Session toggle.
So I installed gconf-editor to flip /apps/gnome-session/options/auto_save_session to TRUE.
Not sure if it works. Once I had to add that missing key as boolean.
Method 4
I wrote a little library/command line tool which allow saving and restoring sessions and has support for different monitors setups as well as virtual desktops. It requires NodeJS to be installed.
Installation
npm install -g linux-window-session-manager
Usage
Save the current session to ~/.lwsm/sessionData/DEFAULT.json
lwsm save
Save the current session to ~/.lwsm/sessionData/my-session.json
lwsm save my-session
Restore the session from ~/.lwsm/sessionData/DEFAULT.json
lwsm restore
Restore the session from ~/.lwsm/sessionData/my-session.json
lwsm restore my-session
Gracefully close all running apps before starting the session
lwsm restore --closeAllOpenWindows
Check it out: https://github.com/johannesjo/linux-window-session-manager
Method 5
It works from the CLI – gnome-session-properties brings up the dialog. I’m not sure where it is on the menu. You can’t run it from the Alt+F2 command window with that command though.
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0