"Start Minimized on Boot" GUI option is missing

[Yowlen]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): Oct 1, 2018
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Xubuntu 18.04
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] No
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

When booting, Steam starts up in the window, with no option in the Settings to start minimized. I could've sworn Steam used to behave this way at one point in Linux and I know it still behaves that way in Windows, but I can't for the life of me figure out why this functionality was removed.

The only possible explanation I can think of on my end is that I had to remove the Status Notifier Plugin on my panel due to crashes relating to a bug in another app, forcing the other app & Steam to use the legacy Notification Plugin stuff. But Steam minimizes to the Notification tray icon just fine, so I don't see why this option would not be present. Unfortunately, I can't test this without uninstalling the other app, and I can't really do that right now.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Install Steam and set it up via the additional installer.
2. (Maybe remove the Status Notifier Plugin from the panel?)
3. Reboot.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @Yowlen, running steam -silent should give this behavior. Adjusting the Exec= line of ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop to end with -silent should also give that behavior when Steam starts with the user session.

[Yowlen]

Okay, that works, but the functionality should still match the Windows client. The Windows client has this option in the GUI, so the Linux one should too.

[Yowlen]

Okay. I take it back. It worked for literally one reboot. Steam actually reset the ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop launcher when it started up. I'd have to put the option back in every time before shutting down the computer for this to work, so this is not an effective workaround.

[kisak-valve]

Can you try adjusting /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop instead?

[Yowlen]

I edited the config one again just to see what would happen and it seems to be sticking now. I think the other one had to do with an issue I was experiencing with a malfunctioning game which prevented me from closing Steam, forcing me to reboot without letting Steam shut down properly. I guess the crash recovery routine resets everything - including the startup thing.

So the first workaround does work, but this still needs to be put as a proper option within the GUI.

[sorsasampo]

@kisak-valve:

Hello @Yowlen, running steam -silent should give this behavior. Adjusting the Exec= line of ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop to end with -silent should also give that behavior when Steam starts with the user session.

This is what I do, and I have the file in version control. But Steam keeps overwriting it:

-Exec=/usr/games/steam -silent %U                                       
+Exec=/usr/games/steam %U

/usr/share/applications/steam.desktop is not the right place to modify for user-specific configuration, either.

@kisak-valve:

1. Steam should stop messing with the Exec line of ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop
2. ... with the exception of adding/removing -silent, which should have an option in the GUI as @Yowlen pointed out.

[Yowlen]

Just to be clear, I figured out why it resets. Whenever a client update is released, the ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop file gets reset. And with me being in the beta program now, it updates every day, sometimes more than once. (I wasn't in the beta program 2 months ago when I wrote those other replies.)

This makes it impossible to use this workaround anymore unless I were to back out of the beta program and essentially forfeit my ability to test other issues I'm currently vested in getting fixed.

[sorsasampo]

Yeah, either Steam or the user modifies that ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop, but clearly not both.

@kisak-valve: another angle for this:

1. Install /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop pristine as usual.
2. Allow people to manually copy this to ~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop to override the system-wide configuration (to add -silent for example). This is the de facto way to overriding .desktop files, and I think for example update-desktop-database considers it.
3. Make ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop just a wrapper that starts steam.desktop, using the overridden file if it exists. I imagine there ought to be an existing command for this, but can't remember one.

Additionally maybe just add a toggleable GUI option that is used as default when no -silent is passed (for completeness, add -no-silent too).

[Yowlen]

There's no reason a user should have to do any of that, though. Any startup options should be toggleable in the GUI, barring an emergency debug command line option or whatever. No hacky workarounds, no command line unless absolutely necessary. We need to start holding Linux's user-friendliness to the same standards as Windows if we ever hope to have Linux not be an outlier in the desktop/laptop OS market. Steam is pushing their Linux-based SteamOS, so I would hope that they understand this necessity.

The Windows version has this option in the GUI, so the Linux version should have it too. That's all there is to it.

[cminnoy]

This still seems to be an open issue, a very much appreciated one! Please add it soon.

[viggy96]

There should be a GUI option to start Steam minimised on startup, just like the Windows client.

[Yowlen]

Which is why this issue is still open. It's not that hard to add, either. They would only need to add logic to the autostart shortcut creation subroutine to add the -silent switch to it if the GUI option is checked, or remove it if it's not.

I have no idea how to do GUI stuff, but even with my own limited skillset, I can make a bash script that can toggle this at will, so unless the GUI change is really that hard, or there's another piece of Steam's code that's getting in the way somewhere, it's no more than a 5 minute fix.

[viggy96]

Yeah, its pretty annoying to have to edit the ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop file every time Steam updates to add the -silent flag. The Linux GUI should have the same options as the Windows one, especially simple features like this.

[viggy96]

Is there any motion on this issue?

[viggy96]

Is there any movement on this issue?

[TriMoon]

In case steam developers stay LAZY to add this, one might consider creating a CRON job that runs every min to check and add the option back to the USER CONFIG desktop file...

That cronjob could run a script that uses grep to check for the option and sed to modify it inline if needed 😉

[cddouma]

Thanks for the suggestions how to work around this issue. Let me share the non-interactive command to apply the workaround (as suggested by @TriMoon). sed -i '/Exec/ { /-silent/! s/steam\>/steam -silent/ }' ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop Make this into a cronjob or a script until the steam settings GUI provide support for this.

[cminnoy]

I want't to add to this that I have been monitoring the power consumption of my NVIDIA graphics card. When Steam is NOT minimized the card consumes about 31 Watt (as measured by the driver) and the clocks stay very active. When Steam minimizes power goes down to 8 Watt and the clock frequency drops to 400 Mhz on my card. To conclude, while you are working on your desktop it is best to keep Steam minimized to the tray on not have the window open. But it clearly indicates that the Steam client is doing something which it ain't supposed to do. There is no reason why it should consume that amount of power from the GPU. As a side note, BigPicture mode also consumes a lot of power even when you don't interact with the screen.

[TriMoon]

@cminnoy That's because it has a browser window process active when shown, which ofcourse has javascript running... More reason to start it minimized on startup :wink:

[cminnoy]

Maybe so.

Large Window Mode and Big Picture mode have similar power consumption issues, even you go to your games library, which is just a bunch of icons. If you select just one game, then the power goes back to normal. So you may be right.

Small Window Mode doesn’t have the issue, neither when you minimise Steam or close it to tray.

As a side note there is another issue with big picture mode:

When I use a Windows client and open there big picture mode, then select a game to stream from my Linux host, Steam on the host stays in big picture mode even after closing the game on the client. And as Steam consumes quite a bit of power extra in big picture mode, your game machine might be not so power efficient when idle.

We may wonder why Steam on the host switches to big picture at all when you stream to a Windows/Linux client, as it serves no purpose at that time I think.

Only using SteamLink as client it has a purpose, as then you get to see the Steam screen of the host on the client.

Van: ©TriMoon™ [mailto:[email protected]] Verzonden: dinsdag 28 januari 2020 11:16 Aan: ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux [email protected] CC: cminnoy [email protected]; Mention [email protected] Onderwerp: Re: [ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux] "Start Minimized on Boot" GUI option is missing (#5806)

@cminnoy https://github.com/cminnoy That's because it has a browser window process active when shown, which ofcourse has javascript running... More reason to start it minimized on startup 😉

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[bjoern-tantau]

Just to be clear, I figured out why it resets. Whenever a client update is released, the ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop file gets reset. And with me being in the beta program now, it updates every day, sometimes more than once. (I wasn't in the beta program 2 months ago when I wrote those other replies.)

This makes it impossible to use this workaround anymore unless I were to back out of the beta program and essentially forfeit my ability to test other issues I'm currently vested in getting fixed.

Can't you just copy the ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop file to ~/.config/autostart/steam-at.desktop or something similar and not use the GUI as a workaround? This should stop the file from being overwritten with every update.

[Yowlen]

Why would I not use the GUI? I can't install new games from Firefox, and updating to the latest GloriousEggroll Proton version on each new release so that music and stuff works in Warframe (among other things that get messed up due to official Proton versions not compiling FAudio with ffmpeg support) requires going into the GUI to change it.

There's a multitude of reasons to want to use the GUI but not have it pop up when you boot up the system, so that workaround is likely only gonna work for a select few people.

We need proper "Start Minimized on Boot" support, including a GUI checkbox. There's no reason the Linux version shouldn't have the same features as the Windows version.

[bjoern-tantau]

I meant, not use the GUI to set Steam to start on boot minimized. As a workaround. Until Valve has fixed this. Of course you should use the GUI for everything else.

[Yowlen]

But that's the whole problem. There's no GUI option for any of this in the first place. Adding the -silent flag has to be done manually.

And honestly, devs that make Linux apps have a bad habit of taking any "workarounds" that actually work and making it the official "solution" just to avoid having to implement it properly in their own code.

So leave the workarounds out of it. I don't wanna risk another bug report getting closed because the workaround was deemed "good enough". I've had more than enough of that from the DXVK devs, among others.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Steam's Linux devs are like that. I'm just saying I don't wanna risk it.

[Lycanite]

It's a hack but setting the .desktop owner to root might do the job making it non-writable.

[qaron84]

I repeat, THIS IS A HACK but it fixed the problem for me!! :D

1. add the option inside the file /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop
2. open steam>settings disable start at boot
3. re-enable start at boot and check the file ~/.config/autostart/Steam.desktop

in my system it adds the options from /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop file and it keeps this setting for every boot after that consistently

[Yowlen]

I will say that adding the -silent option to the ~/.config/autostart/steam.desktop file, then making the file read-only to the user does work as a workaround, and is easier to accomplish than the rest of the workarounds that have been suggested, and unlike them, this doesn't require root to perform since chmod (or the GUI file manager equivalent) doesn't need root to work on the user's own files.

Still need the GUI option, ofc, but this has been working for me for a month or two now.

[ghost]

Disable the option within Steam "Run when my computer starts" then manually add the -silent option into a manually-made new/copied autostart.

Yes, Steam will also execute if you make a manual autostart and as far as I see, will not rewrite it if the option is disabled to continually monitor and remake it within Steam.

You can also be extra sure and just give the autostart a different name, like I did. I don't make sense of how Steam would detect such a 'rogue' autostart with a different name and delete it.

[karypid]

This is every annoying. It should just be added to the code rather than asking Linux users to manually run periodic jobs that update the desktop shortcut. There should be a preference that gets saved to disk, as well as code that reads it at startup and decides whether to show the main window or not.

[viggy96]

Will this option ever be added to the Linux client? Its simple enough to add, the "-silent" argument just has to be included in the steam.desktop file when the option is enabled.