How do I enable / disable start center to appear as default on startup? (no solution as of Q1, 2024)

It does. It makes a whole lot of sense.
Start Center is an (unrecognized) organizer.
It should be available anytime, even when a program is already “open”.
And it should be developed…

Imagine sessions… as in Geany, for example…
You may have 3 or 4 projects that you work on.
Which were those 12 documents that were open when you were last working on one of them? Just open that session! And your 12 documents would be there…

And 10 minutes later, you can open another session of yours, with 8 documents…
and then get back to the main project session…

An organizer is a very-very good functionality…
and the Start Center, even now is already something that reminds me of that :slight_smile:

Seems to be tdf#159267

The same with me! :slight_smile: Seriously!
It happened after I had closed my last document, and I saw it :slight_smile:
I realized that I could pin a document to the top…
I realized I can dismiss the irrelevant documents…
and all of a sudden I felt like, wow, it’d be such a great thing to have a document organizer…
a Document Center… – you name it :slight_smile:

I should have mentioned that I meant opening a program, like Writer…
(now I have corrected the OP, indicating that I edited it)

Mike, one more thing: you would be right!
You would be right if the user could open the start center anytime…
But once the desired application (Writer) is running,
the universal Libreoffice starter / launcher doesn’t function… (which makes sense)

Reading back your installation description, I see you’re under Ubuntu, probably with a GNOME-derived desktop (considering your mention of Geany). The Unix design philosophy, inherited by Linux, is small utilities combined to provide a service. This is the opposite of monolithic “universal” applications. Such application are difficult to implement, to maintain and to modify. This is why you have so many different apps: file managers, text editors, web browsers, office suites, CAD programs, DTP apps, …

However developers have recognised that users have a preferential domain. And they created “environments” which overlay the common apps to offer a unified vision of your data.

I am not familiar with GNOME because I prefer KDE. Perhaps, you have an equivalent feature. In KDE you can define Activities where your file system (essentially your home directory, but this is not limitative) is virtually restructured to show only the files of interest. This restructuration does not apply only on files. It is also effective on the desktop: the application menu only shows the apps you’ve chosen, the desktop itself is customised.

The goal is both to protect yourself against your own errors and to be more efficient in your present job. You can of course switch between your activities (with the activities menu) and this changes your desktop environment.

This a lightweight substitute to using different sessions (user-ids) with the added benefit of easily sharing data between activities. It is possible to switch between OS-sessions with Ctrl+Shift+Fn but this is heavier than selecting another activity (however you benefit from a superior separation, protecting more against error). And I you like a sledgehammer for watch making, you can go even further by creating a virtual machine for each of your activities. This offers maximum security but at what price?

I am no developer. I have no influence on the future of LO. Considering the pending bugs, some of them being very important, and the scarcity of developers, I personally (I insist this is really a personal statement) prefer developers focus on bugs rather than a feature which can be replaced but some other procedure outside LO, even if this feature is presently a mess. Of course, if the feature evolves, I’ll evaluate it and see if I can make some use of it.

There is no solution.
In order to make LO star with the start center or with a new document,
we have to add parameters to the launching command (i.e. the louncher / shortcut icon).

This is a workaround. It is also easy to do.
However, when we want to set the preferences of a program / application / app,
we’ll go “Tools / Options”, and look for the option there
This is what’s not available yet.

Those who are comfortable with making changes to the appearance of an application outside of it, sure, should follow the link below:
(but this is not what the OP was about)

Starting LibreOffice Software With Parameters libreoffice.org

To start Libre Office with the Start Center to Windows > Program Files > LibreOffice
program and find SOFFICE.EXE If Explorer does not show extentions then it’s just the application SOFFICE. Right click that file, show more options, and select PIN TO TASKBAR or mack a SHORTCUT. If you wish to open directly into a new document you will have to chose each type separately. For example SDRAW, SCALC ect. I see that this has been solved, but I found the answer to be confusing, I hope this is simpler.