CLI command to start minimized?

[LinuxGEEK7288]

Hey found this thread while trying to figure out how to start Evolution minimized, still no no luck but I can answer this question.

so why wouldn't I just use

evolution & empathy

Just curious. I tried both of them and to me, it appears like they do the same thing. So why would I need the sh -c prior to the two programs? Thanks!

-Spydey

Fist check out this link:
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/special-chars.html

It answers most the great questions of bash special characters

But the quick and dirty is this; the "&" simply tells the the program to run in the background so you can continue using the terminal. While "evolution && empathy" say not to run the second command till the first one completes successfully.

What you want to run them both in the background would be "evolution ; empathy &" the ";" is a command separator.

Hope that helps and if anyone knows how to start evolution minimized at startup I would be most thankful

[iamajd]

I know I'm resurrecting an ancient (by Ubuntu forums standards) thread, but Empathy can be started with the --start-hidden option so that it runs in the messaging notifier but doesn't show any windows.

[spydeyrch]

@iamajd

Thanks man for the info!! That helps a ton.

-Spydey

[ink_rus]

Maybe:

empathy -h

but how to minimize evolution? Try to use evolution indicator applet.

[decoherence]

What you want to run them both in the background would be "evolution ; empathy &" the ";" is a command separator.

This might work because evolution forks in to a background process (maybe? i don't use evolution) however the correct way that will work with any programs is similar to what spydeyrch mentioned. '&' is also a command separator.

evolution & empathy &

compare:

xeyes ; glxgears &
and
xeyes & glxgears &

the first will start xeyes, then start glxgears once xeyes closes (because xeyes doesn't fork another process, it blocks the command.) the second will behave the way that was suggested, with both starting simultaneously.

[sup]

First, create a file somewhere (for example ~/.devilspie/minimize_evolution.ds with the following:

(if  
(is (applicatio_name) "Evolution")  
(begin (minimize) )  
)

(Note I do not have Evolution installed, so it's application name might be different, you can find out with running devilspie with a file containing

(debug)

and nothing else)

Then you could do something like

devilspie ~/.devilspie/minimize_evolution.ds &  xxx=$!; evolution & empathy --start-hiden & sleep 10;  kill $xxx

It basically runs devilspie with a rule to minimize evolution in the background, saves its PID to variable xxx, launches evolution, launches empathy minimized, waits 10 seconds (you can make this longer if it takes evolution a long time to start) and then kills devilspies. If you did not kill devilspie, it Evolution would keep minimizing when you would interact with it later. Hope this works, I have tested this only partially.