How to always start gvim maximized in Linux?

Question

set lines=999 columns=999

doesn't work, and

au GUIEnter * simalt ~x

only works for Windows.

Answer 1

It's your window manager who takes care about setting the initial window size. To get gvim maximized, you need to convince him to do that. This does of course depend on the window manager used.

Alternatively, define a window manager shortcut to maximize windows and use that after starting gvim.

Answer 2

You can do that in Linux by setting 'lines' and 'columns' to large values, but for some reason they can't be arbitrarily large. I found I had to set each of them to either the same values as a maximized window or slightly larger. For example, setting lines=99 worked for me.