How to autostart any program when Gnome desktop session starts

The gnome-session program starts up the desktop environment. Essentially, it loads either your last session, or a default session as defined by the user. There might be some applications that you want automatically started after the boot. For instance, those in habit of using the Skype would prefer to have it on even without  having to click. Well, that is only possible when you autostart a program at the start up. If you autostart a program in Gnome desktop it will start only after the session starts. This is in contrary to the PreSession solution that starts before the session has started. Now the question is how to make a program autostart when your Gnome desktop session starts.

The simple solution to autostart a program in Gnome Desktop session lies in the following entry

/usr/share/gnome/autostart

To simplify things let’s see an example. Suppose you want Skype to autostart when the session starts. Just follow the steps below

Step 1: Go to the System

Step 2: In the Preference menu choose Sessions

Step 3: Add the start up program

This allow Skype to be accessed from the /usr/bin

To start Skype on log in, just use this

sudo cp /usr/bin/skype /usr/share/autostart