I can run a script at boot by adding the following line to my crontab:
@reboot perl /path/script
That works fine. But the problem arises when I try to run a gui application such as gmail notify. It simply doesn't run.
How do I run a gui application on startup?
Best Answer
Cron is not the program you're after. To run GUI programs there are different approaches. Which one to choose depends on your desktop environment.
The traditional way is to hook it into your .xinitrc file before starting the window manager. A simple example .xinitrc looks as follows:
Depending on the desktop environment, you can also use
~/.config/autostart/
and create aprogram.desktop
file. Check that directory, if it already contains entries. That's the easiest way, I guess.Source: freedesktop autostart specification