I wish to replace my current desktop view with a web-browser view of a specified URL and still be able to open more windows of whatever application I so choose; how would one go about accomplishing that?
I am comfortable with the command line and have programming experience, but a barebones solution would be most appreciated.
I found this related question, but I'm not sure if that's the right direction to go.
Any geniuses?
After replacing the desktop with a browser instance you will not be able to run additional applications - at least not the way you presumably like them to. In that case you should just leave your Xsession the way it was configured.
Let me suggest you add the following command to your autostart applications:
xdg-open <url>
This will open the given URL in your default browser. Of course you will have to configure this browser to always start in fullscreen if this was needed.
In case you run Firefox you may also create a specific profile for you user and run it with the following command in autostart applications:
firefox -profile "<profile_path>"
