Bug 3510 - Annoying to have to choose a profile every time
Summary: Annoying to have to choose a profile every time
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: ThinLinc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Other (show other bugs)
Version: 3.0.0
Hardware: PC Unknown
: P2 Normal
Target Milestone: LowPrio
Assignee: Peter Åstrand
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-05-03 16:00 CEST by Peter Åstrand
Modified: 2025-07-04 17:58 CEST (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Acceptance Criteria:


Attachments

Description Peter Åstrand cendio 2010-05-03 16:00:24 CEST
By default, TL allows the user to fully configure the session startup, using the ~/.thinlinc/xstartup mechanism. However, very often, what you want to do is just select a certain profile. This is currently not every easy to achieve. xstartup.default calls 

tl-run-xstartup.d
tl-run-profile
tl-run-xlogout.d

But tl-run-xstartup.d is a all-or-nothing thing: If you include it, you'll get the profile selector dialog, no matter what. The only exception is if you have export TLCOMMAND. Works for tl-run-windesk, but still a bit ugly. 

I think this should be easier. Perhaps tl-select-profile should simply exit if TLPROFILE is already defined?
Comment 1 Peter Åstrand cendio 2013-10-02 15:07:51 CEST
One somewhat ugly solution:

#!/bin/bash
TLPROFILE=windows
export TLCOMMAND=`tl-config /profiles/$TLPROFILE/cmdline`
. /opt/thinlinc/etc/xstartup.default
Comment 2 Pierre Ossman cendio 2019-05-21 12:36:06 CEST
The scenario here is that the system has multiple possible profiles and the user wants to avoid having to select one every time they log in.
Comment 5 Tobias cendio 2025-07-04 17:48:11 CEST
When discussing this bug, one aspect that came up was where and how to store saved preferences, such as remembering profile choices. The standardized XDG directory scheme [1] appeared like a sensible choice, in particular the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory -- by default pointing to $HOME/.config/ -- seems well-suited for storing these kinds of app-specific settings. This approach would work nicely since home directories are synced across agents.

Another question that needs to be resolved one way or another is how users are supposed to reset their preferences. Having chosen to discard all pages in the profile chooser, there’s nothing left to interact with. Introducing a reset option in the native client options dialog is one path forward, but that would unfortunately exclude webaccess users, leaving them in a weird situation. That leaves us with users having to manually modify or delete the preferences file.

[1] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/
Comment 6 Tobias cendio 2025-07-04 17:48:42 CEST
We likely want to offer two independent choices to skip either the introduction page and/or the profile list page. That would leave the door open to skip just one page, and in addition, avoid any ambiguity if the choice applies to both pages or just one of them.

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