How to manage startup applications in Debian 9?

Question

So I'd like to manage my autostart applications and e.g. disable those which I prefer not to autostart. How can I do that in Debian 9.0?

I could not do so via the System Monitor and I'd prefer a GUI over the console.
^{Furthermore it would be nice if such a tool also displayed some information about the apps/processes such as what they do, whether they're safe to disable and e.g. things like whether many have them running as well and whether (many/specific) users have flagged them for being undesired.}

Solution 1

There are (at least) two packages in Debian which provide tools to manage startup applications.

The first is gnome-tweak-tool; its “Startup Applications” tab allows you to manage your startup applications in your desktop environment.

The second is systemd-ui; it shows all the configured systemd units and jobs on your system, and allows you to start, stop, restart and reload units. It also displays the description and dependencies of each unit (but not the links to the documentation which may be given in the unit). It doesn’t seem to allow enabling and disabling units though, which is probably what you’re after.

Solution 2

You can use use Boot Up Manager, which is essentially a front-end to manage the scripts in /etc/init.d. It'll give you a view of what scripts are present on your computer and which ones are active. You can enable or disable them in the GUI. It does provide a level of additional information if you select Advanced and go to the Services tab. This includes priority, tags and a home page you can visit to get more detail. You can find more information on it here: http://www.marzocca.net/linux/bumdocs.html and install it with apt-get install bum

If you're just looking to add a program to startup, there was a (gnome-based) Startup Applications program with a simple click and add interface available in jessie (or in my installation at at least). I can't establish if it is present in stretch from a simple google.It may be worth checking to see if the option is available in your menu.

Solution 3

Startup-Watcher

Also as an alternative this application can watch for changes on 32 locations about auto-starting applications, services etc.

Captures

Comments

[Stephen Kitt]

Are you trying to manage daemons, or your desktop’s startup applications?

[mYnDstrEAm]

@StephenKitt Both. Especially for daemons information for what each is for would be useful.

[mYnDstrEAm]

Some more ways: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/15330/…

[mYnDstrEAm]

askubuntu.com/questions/19320/how-to-enable-or-disable-servi‌​ces

[mYnDstrEAm]

That's pretty much what I was looking for; thanks. However it doesn't show all the processes (incl daemons) that are shown under System Monitor->Processes after I started up so it's missing things. Furthermore it would be nice if it also displayed some more info on each process; for instance it could fetch packages.debian.org descriptions among other things. And it could also compare the hashes with those fetched from some online source. But most useful would be showing truly all startup processes (also incl those of other users).

[mYnDstrEAm]

Sadly bum has been removed from Debian's repos now. Still looking for an alternative GUI...

[toongeorges]

It seems on Debian buster gnome-tweak-tool has been renamed to gnome-tweaks

[mYnDstrEAm]

KDE also has settings for Autostarts but it basically doesn't show anything. It's probably not much different for XFCE or can you see all the systemd services and so on that get started automatically there?