I run a lot of terminal sessions on my computer desktop so I can connect to some remote servers.

In GNOME, the terminal always starts out small, and then I have to click on the icon in the top right corner of the window to maximize it.

It also displays the title once in the title bar, and a second time in the tab title, which used up some of the screen unnecessarily.

No more!

The best solution I've found uses Openbox.

I installed it using Yum, then ran it once from the command line with the --replace option. After that, GNOME remembered to start it up instead of its default window manager, Metacity.

Then I created ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml with the following applications section:

<applications>
    <application class="Firefox*">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
    <application class="Gnome-terminal">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
    <application class="Terminal">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
</applications>

Now Firefox and my terminals start up maximized and without a title.

My GNOME desktop without window borders

On the rare occasion I need to turn borders back on, I can press Alt+Space then click on Decorate from the menu.