Gnome Session for Power Users

Registered by Steve Langasek

For two release cycles, gnome-session has deliberately not done session restoring on login. This is a huge stumbling block for power users, who have to spend a lot of time on each login re-setting up their work environment. This should be solved for 12.04.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
Jason Warner
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Steve Langasek
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

= Session notes =

Session saving and restoring is a broad topic
- one usecase is: users who want to restore their windows positions and geometry

workaround:
http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie/

Known issues with the gnome-session code:
- gnome-session doesn't have "by session" saving, which leads to breakage for people switching between sessions (i.e gnome-shell and unity)
- lot of applications don't support session saving properly

In practice the feature leads to a bad experience for users

request for session management in gtk:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79285

wiki page: http://live.gnome.org/SessionManagement/EggSMClient

Work items:
[didrocks] add a gsettings key upstream to enable restoring the sessions by default
[slangasek] follow up with desktop team regarding compiz bugs
[Sweetshark] make libO support session saving (since it already knows how to restore after a crash, and already knows how to talk xsmp!) (there is a bug in LP, find it and link to blueprint)

(?)

Work Items