In my previous installation, gedit defaulted to open my files at the last cursor position. I just re-installed ubuntu 20.04 and gedit opens my files at the top of the document.

I found a thread which explains how to disable the feature with the following steps:

So I thought I could change the restore_cursor_position to Yes to solve my problem.

Unfortunately, when I install the gconf-editor, there is no gedit-2 option in the apps section.

I've tried other editors, but they do the same thing.

How do I get gedit to open my files at the last cursor position by default?

Or, is there another editor which will do this?

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1724...e-gconf-editor
probably it is renamed, it is gconftool-2

From the other hand I think every editor can do that, including vi and emacs.

gedit migrated from GConf to dconf/GSettings in 2010 (as part of transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3). Use dconf-editor resp. gsettings instead. The setting is there:

This looks promising. I'm running xfce so I think I should be using the dconf-editor and not the gconf-editor. I really am lost when it comes to this level of understanding linux.

I've been trying to figure out how to set that key (restore-cursor-position) to true. Or even how to display the current value of the key. I'm not even sure if it is a key. I'm a little lost.

I've been trying to decipher the man page for gsettings, but it just confuses me more.

I apologize for my ignorance, but this is how we learn things, right?

So my question is, what is the gsettings command to set restore-cursor-position to true.

Thanks!

or just
(it should be true by default).

I executed both of these commands and gedit still opens at the top of the file after I make changes in the middle of the file.

Are you sure it's gedit you're using and not, say mousepad (which is part of default Xubuntu installation)?

I have a launcher on my panel that is set to open a specific file with gedit.

When I saw your post, I tried opening the file from the command line. I made some changes and went back in to the file the same way and it remembered the cursor position.

It turns out that my launcher was configured using sudo gedit and that is what was causing the problem. I have no idea why I would have done that to open a specific file which did not require super user privileges.

Problem solved.

But now that you know the root cause of this problem, do you know why opening gedit as a super user behaves differently?

Thanks for all your help!

gsettings changes settings for the current user, not for root.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm very sorry to have to report that the problem has resurfaced and this time I'm not opening gedit with the sudo command. Everything was working really well, and then, poof. It wasn't working well anymore. gedit is not remembering my last cursor position in changed files even when I open without the sudo command.

I was really happy for a minute. And now I'm back to relative sadness.

Please help me.

I guess you open files with gedit with and without su (or sudo). And [I guess] now the gedit config file is read only for the user and you even cannot configure it (because it is write protected and owned by root).
The only solution to this problem is to avoid doing it. (or actually you may try to make a workaround, but that looks extremely difficult to me).

Sometimes I need to edit a file with sudo because it is a system file. I admit that when it comes to permissions on files I really don't have a clue.

Is there a way to restore the gedit config file to default settings? I uninstalled gedit and reinstalled it and it didn't make any difference. I also tried:

and that didn't work either.

better to use a different editor for system files (for example nano).

1 members found this post helpful.

I was thinking the same thing. But first I have to get gedit back to its default settings. Any thoughts?