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I'd like to start the Xfce Terminal in Xfce always maximized. (Usually, I do that through the launcher in the panel.)

I've already done that for Emacs by means of X resources; however, xfce4-terminal doesn't read X resources.

How to make it be always started maximized?

imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev
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1 Answers1

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Unfortunately, xfce4-terminal doesn't read X resources, so that there is no unified way to make such configuration for all X clients which are xfce4-terminals (even remote ones.)

Start terminal maximized? has already been asked at reddit and answered; that's only a part of the complete correct answer:

Change the Exec command in /usr/share/applications/xfce4-terminal.desktop.

There are two drawbacks with this answer:

  1. /usr/share/applications/ is not the place for customizations; it would be overwritten by distro package upgrades.

  2. It doesn't affect the launcher for the terminal, which in its turn uses exo-open --launch TerminalEmulator. (This problem was pointed out in that thread at reddit.)

Solutions:

1. The place for customizations

Per the advice by killermoehre in https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2015-April/034375.html:

Never ever change files in /usr (except for /usr/local) directly. They will be overwritten on updates. If you want to make changes, copy them before into ~/.local/share/applications/ (create if necessary).

so, I've edited /usr/share/applications/xfce4-terminal.desktop and saved it to ~/.local/share/applications/xfce4-terminal.desktop. The changed line looks like this:

Exec=xfce4-terminal --maximize

2. Affecting the behavior of the launcher

By grepping through ~/.local and ~/.config after having configured a custom helper as the Terminal through the menu, I've found the other place that needs to be changed -- ~/.local/share/xfce4/helpers/custom-TerminalEmulator.desktop (--maximize is present at two places):

[Desktop Entry]
NoDisplay=true
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=X-XFCE-Helper
X-XFCE-Category=TerminalEmulator
X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=/usr/bin/xfce4-terminal --maximize -x "%s"
Icon=xfce4-terminal
Name=xfce4-terminal
X-XFCE-Commands=/usr/bin/xfce4-terminal --maximize

whereas I have the following ~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc:

WebBrowser=firefox
MailReader=thunderbird
FileManager=Thunar
TerminalEmulator=xfce4-terminal
imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev
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    If you use the keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+Alt+T and Super+T to launch the Terminal emulator, you will need to edit those too. Mine both now look like this: exo-open --launch TerminalEmulator --maximize – Беров May 01 '20 at 09:45