Ubuntu – How to start gnome-terminal at a particular directory

Gnome-Terminal has no option to start minimised.

The following is more a workaround to do this:

First wmctrl is needed, but not the version from the repositories because this version doesn't have an option tho minimize windows. (If you have already installed wmctrl you have to remove it).

Download the version from github https://github.com/geekless/wmctrl/archive/master.zip and install it (follow the INSTALL file -> ./configure then sudo make install). If you get error: X11/Xmu/WinUtil.h you have also to install sudo apt-get install libxmu-dev and then try again.

Then you can run from commandline this for example:

gnome-terminal -x sh -c "ls; bash" & disown && sleep 3 &&  wmctrl -i -Y  $(wmctrl -l | awk -F' ' 'END{print $1}')

Explanation:

1. gnome-terminal -x sh -c "ls; bash" & disown run gnome-terminal in background and execute a command (in this case ls)
2. sleep 3 wait until the gnome-terminal window appears (you can experiment with this value, 3 seconds could be to short or to long, depends on your hardware)
3. wmctrl -i -Y -i -> Interpret window arguments as a numeric value, -Y -> Iconify (minimize) the window
4. $(wmctrl -l | awk -F' ' 'END{print $1}') or $(wmctrl -l | tail -1 | cut -d' ' -f1) get the window id of the last opened window (should be the window id of gnome-terminal in this case)

To simplify it you can add a function to your $HOME/.bashrc file:

gterm-min() {
    gnome-terminal -x sh -c "$1; bash" & disown  
    sleep 3   
    wmctrl -i -Y  $(wmctrl -l | awk -F' ' 'END{print $1}')
}

then you could use it like this:

gterm-min "ls -la"

This can be done by changing the custom command of gnome-terminal to

bash -c 'export PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -ne \033]0;$PWD\007"; exec bash'

then each time you open a new tab the title of the terminal window will be set to the current working directory of the tab.

Then, to save the current working directory of all tabs, you must determine the number of currently opened tabs. This can be done with

gnome-terminal --save-config=config.cfg

and inspecting the saved file config.cfg. Then iterate through all tabs using

xdotool key ctrl+Page_Down

and save the window title (which is equal to the current working directory) with

xprop -id $WINDOWID WM_NAME