Gnome Startup Ordering and Control

WARNING: Take care following this tip, backup whatever you are messing with first (I normally backup my entire home folder)!

Over time I noticed Gnome was not too good at starting things in the right order. It really did seem to randomly start apps from the sessions box in any old order. It could just be me but I'm sure it isnt. I decided to something about it because I like to control my PC. It's quite a simple process but it does require a lot of X restarting.

Open the session editor: Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Sessions (or use gconf-editor).
Disable unwanted apps in the list (the was some crap in there, linux seems to get more winows every day!).
The ones you do want: Click edit and copy the command into a text editor, save the list as ~/bin/SCRIPT (where SCRIPT is whatever you want to call it).
Create a bash script by adding #!/bin/bash to the first line of the text file and chmod 700 SCRIPT
With all but the essential startup apps running in the Sessions Applet add your SCRIPT to it as well (if you are lucky, you will only have your script in the list)!
Re Jigger the script such that the apps start in the right order, bobs your mothers/fathers brother!

I added several sleep's in to double make sure the system does what I want it to do.. If, like me, you use compiz. I would REALLY suggest doing some research into wmctrl. After all my _background_apps start I have my cube rotate, start app, rotate back, start another app bla..bla...bla.... You get the idea. My desktop does take about 30 seconds to come up and do all its rotating and app starting but I dont suffer from awn manager starting under conky onday and over the next!

Gnome Startup Ordering and Control

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