OK, so you use the same application every time you login. So, you are wondering, how do I start that application so that it is already running when I start up? Easy, create an entry in the Session manager so that it will start on boot. Here is how to do that.

Open Sessions Preferences

For those of you using a Linux OS, you might have wanted to start a particular program or application at start up - when you login.

You probably know this: you power on your machine, and immediately after you've logged in you manually start your two or three favourite applications. Why not have the system start these applications for you automatically? This short guide shows how to accomplish this under GNOME.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.4 was released today. It doesn't come with new major features except an option to customize the GDM (login screen), which you can use to change the login screen background, logo, disable the user list, disable the login sound and disable showing the restart buttons:

What's new in Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6? Well... first of all, there is no more Usplash (the boot splash screen). So it appears the the team has successfully managed to fulfill their initial plans for making a faster startup where a boot screen is no longer necessary.

Here you can see the default login screen for Ubuntu 8.10. You simply add username and password and you have access to the Desktop. Simple, however, as you will see there are many options that can go with this login process. If you will go to System/Administration and select Login Window you will find that you have a lot of options available for login.

Ubuntu makes it easy to enable automatic login if you're using a login manager such as GDM. I was recently setting up a minimal Ubuntu 9.10 system with an LXDE desktop and no GDM. Here's how I enabled automatic login.

Empathy is an instant messaging application for the GNOME Desktop. It supports text, voice & video chat, and file transfers and most used messaging systems such as MSN and Google Talk. Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala comes with Empathy as a default instant messaging client.

"In a day of laptops and remote systems, it's often impractical to keep the same ssh session going to a specific server indefinitely. There are times when I want to reconnect from home to an ssh session that I started at work. Unfortunately, ssh doesn't support that sort of thing. But the screen utility lets you do something similar to this.