Qt C ++ Application: Installing Standalone Autostart on Linux

Question

I am porting some Qt Windows / VC ++ code to Linux / GCC. An application can add its own shortcut to the Windows Autostart folder so that the application starts after logging in.

I want to do the same in Linux. I use Kubuntu 15.10, but the solution should work for almost all (or at least most) Linux variants. And it should work without superuser rights (or it should request rights automatically).

I searched the Internet and found two solutions:

• Add a desktop recording file to $HOME/.config/autostart
• Add a symlink to /etc/init.d/

Will they work on all Linux distributions? What are the differences? Which one is preferable?

Also, I would like to know if I should do this by programmatically running a shell command or if there is some native API that I could use in C / C ++ (including easy error detection).

Answer 1

You can add applications in various ways.

• Via the linux init system. For the latest Linux, systemd is the standard. In this case, you need to create a systemd module for your application
• Through a desktop manager such as gnome, kde and others. In this case, you will also need to create a specification for the autorun application .
• Via bash files

, systemd unit, , .

Answer 2

GitHub . Qt. , , : https://github.com/b00f/qautostart