This really annoyed me when I first installed Ubuntu 11.10. One thing I always do when I install an Operating System is stop certain services from auto starting.
In Ubuntu 11.10 to view your Startup Applications you go to the top right of your screen and click the settings “cog”
When the Start-up Applications program has loaded you will notice that there is nothing in there except the Ubuntu Login Sound. This is because by default they are hidden.
To Unhide them simply open up a terminal (Ctrl, Alt + T) and issue the following commands.
cd /etc/xdg/autostart
Then do
sudo sed --in-place 's/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g' *.desktop
This will then use the ‘sed’ program to go through all the files and change NoDisplay=true to Nodisplay=false.
Once you have done this, go back to the settings cog and click ‘startup applications’ and if by magic you should now have all of your autostart applications in there.
