RE: Proposal for new thinking in Session management

[<martyn 2 russell bt com>]

> >I propose a new system, that ALWAYS saves the session without asking,
> >and gives the user the chance to open up his previous session when
> >loggin in.
> 
> Until the GNOME session code is built well enough to handle any
> application - and frankly, that time seems unlikely to come -
> I would suggest that making this change will make a user's
> life harder, rather than easier.
> 
> For instance, with the GNOME software that Sun currently ships,
> less than 50% of the applications the users start are recognized
> at all by the 'save sessions' code.  Of the ones that are recognized,
> a number are not done properly, because applications like
> mozilla and many others are started in wrapper shells that set up
> various environment variables, etc.

Gnome prompts the user when you save a session anyway to tell you that
x, y, and z applications can not be saved because they do not support
saving sessions, hence the user is aware that only select Applications
will come back up in a similar state to the way they are.

Personally, I think this is a good idea. Some times I want to start a
clean session (e.g. when I am only using my machine for a few minutes)
and other times I do want to start with the session I generally use.

I also think if fast switching (as Curtis Hovey suggested) was
implemented, it would be superb.  Often I need to do things under
different users as a developer and from a family point of view (with > 1
person using a machine) it is most convenient.

I find the session saving quite useful (although I don't save them too
often), when I log on, I have Evolution, Gossip, one Epiphany window and
a Gnome Terminal come up, all on different desktops ready to go, and it
is great!

Regards,
Martyn