42. Change Session Settings

A session, which loads your GUI environment, begins when you log on and ends when you log off. In the Sessions dialog box, you can control session settings such as the display of a confirmation box when you end a session (by logging out) and whether changes to a particular session are automatically saved. These changes would be in the form of changes to the GNOME desktop (icons, colors, fonts, and so on) and application and applet windows left open (or minimized) on the desktop.

When you save the changes to your current session, any applications open on the desktop will start automatically the next time you log on to the session. This means that you can park commonly used applications (and a particular document or spreadsheet) and get right back to work the next time you log on.

Not all programs automatically reload when you log back on to your session. These are referred to as nonsession managed applications (as opposed to session managed applications such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and most all the NLD applications).

An example of a nonsession managed application would be a utility or tool that must be run from a terminal window. If you want to run nonsession managed applications upon logging on to a session, you can add them to the Startup Programs tab of the Sessions dialog box.

Before You Begin

1 About Booting the NLD System and Logon Options

23 Change Personal Settings

32 About Configuring Hardware and System Settings in NLD

Open Sessions Dialog

From the Settings dialog (select System, Personal Settings), double-click the Sessions icon in the System pane. The Sessions dialog box opens.

Set Session Options

By default the session options are configured to show a splash screen at logon (that is, the NLD splash screen you see as GNOME is loaded) and prompt you to save changes to your session at logout. If you want changes to your current session saved automatically when logging off, select the Automatically Save Changes to Session check box.

Note

The Session Options tab also provides you with the ability to create sessions and save them under a particular name. This feature would be extremely useful if there was a quick and easy way to switch between the sessions or easily load them at startup. You do have the ability to load your last session at startup (which is the default option on the Logon Manager). A command-line tool, gnome-session, can be used to load a particular session at startup, but you would have to load NLD from a command line or special script. The GNOME documentation (http://www.gnome.org) promises some sort of session switcher utility in future versions of GNOME.

View Currently Running Programs

Select the Current Session tab. This tab provides a list of applications and applets that are running during the session that are session managed applications, meaning their state can be saved during the session and reloaded the next time you start the session. You can change the order that the application is started; select the Order spinner box and input a new order number. If you want to change the Style for an application (how it is treated during session loading), click the Style drop-down list. The Normal style starts the application when you log on to the NLD system. The Restart style restarts the application whenever you close it. The Trash style is selected when you do not want the application to start. Any changes to this tab must be confirmed; select Apply.

Note

Unless you fully understand the issues related to application load order and style (found on the Current Session tab), you may want to leave all these settings at the defaults.

Add Startup Programs

Select the Startup Programs tab. To add an applet or application to the startup list (it starts automatically when the session is started), select the Add button. In the Add Startup Program dialog that appears, provide the command that starts the application or use the Browse button to locate the application. Click OK to close the Add Startup Program dialog.

After you have finished working in the Sessions dialog box, click the Close button.