I don't have anything in ~/.kde4/Autostart, yet a few applications always see fit to start themselves when I login, even if they weren't running at the time I last logged out.

This is very frustrating, does anyone know of another place besides ~/.kde4/Autostart to look for apps that will load themselves upon login?

Which applications? You can take a look in /etc/xdg/autostart/ and the Autostart KCM in System Settings (System Administration -> Startup and Shutdown -> Autostart in 4.5.x).

firefox, twinkle, and pidgin. None of these were in /etc/xdg/autostart or the Autostart menu in systemsettings.

what is contained in ~/.config/autostart/ ?

have you tried adding these to the "applications to be excluded from sessions" in session management kcm?

Go to system settings -> startup and shutdown -> session management and tell us what the "on login" setting is set to. Make sure it isn't set to "Restore Manually Saved Session". Try setting it to "start with an empty session", rebooting, and see if that fixes it. If it does, set it to "Restore Previous Session". You may need to restart some system tray applets if you do this, so make sure you write down which applets you have running.

Also ensure that the applications have properly exited, rather than hanging after closing their windows. If the application is running on log off, KDE will try to restart it automatically on login.

I've made sure that applications are stopped and really dead. In the rare times I use Firefox, this has been a problem as it never seems to want to completely die when you close the program.

My main problem is that we have been having power issues in the building where I work recently, and coupled with a bad UPS (trying to get it replaced) that means the computer loses power once in a while. I've set the BIOS on my workstation to wake-on-power so that it starts back up if we lose power, but even when I have made sure apps are stopped before I leave the office, they start up again once I log back into KDE. It seems that the absence of a clean logout means that KDE doesn't know these programs were shut down and thus starts them on the next login.


I really, REALLY do not like this "feature" of KDE. Is there a way to completely disable it? I don't need KDE to start programs for me. If I want to start them, I'll do so myself. If I want them to start up on login, I'll add them to Autostart. I don't need my window manager to hold my hand.

in systemsettings there is a "start with empty session" option
systemsettings -> startup & shutdowm -> session management

Thank you very much.

Be careful, starting with an empty session will also close some stuff in the system tray.