Autostart Apps in KDE

Hi all -

Today, I finally got SuperKaramba working, and with that, the Liquid Weather theme (the whole reason I wanted SK in the first place!) I'm a weather junkie, what can I say.

Anyhoooo I learned how to make applications auto-run in KDE today (similar to putting things in the "startup" folder in Windows). There are probably multiple ways to do this, but here's what worked for me. My example - configuring SuperKaramba and the Liquid Weather theme to run automatically at startup.


1. Create a file in the .kde/Autostart directory in your home directory (/home/whoeveruare/.kde/Autostart). I called mine start_karamba.

2. Paste the following script into that file. Change paths to match your system's configuration.

#!/bin/sh
KARAMBA_PATH=/usr/local/kde/bin/superkaramba #path to the superkaramba program
THEME=/usr/local/kde/themes/liquid_weather_plus/liquid_weather.theme #path to the theme file

$KARAMBA_PATH $THEME


3. Save file.

4. Make the file executable. Such as:
chmod +x start_karamba

5. Test it out by executing your script from the command line, or just log out of your kde session and log back in. (You may want to close liquid weather/superkaramba if it's running before logging out, to be sure you aren't just reloading your previous session).

Another thing to note - if you've just started using liquid weather, your user configuration changes (like your city) will not "stick" unless you either close the theme or reload the theme. That's when the config file is actually written. So, if you haven't already at least once closed or reloaded the weather theme, liquid weather will restart with the default options. reload the theme once after you've configured it with your city (right-click on the weather panel and choose configure theme, reload) to be sure you've saved your settings.

Now I've got the weather forecast on my desktop - hoooraah!