How do I set a specific render engine while launching blender? I have noticed that Blender Internal Render Engine is the default engine that is set when launching Blender. Users can change this behavior by setting a different engine and saving the user preferences.

My question is, is it possible to choose the engine to be used by blender when launching blender?
Yes, it is possible.

There are lots of command-line flags provided by Blender and the flags that are related to rendering engine type are -E engine or --engine engine

So, to launch Blender with the CYCLES rendering engine set, the following command can be used.

blender --engine CYCLES


You can get a list of available engines by using

blender --engine help


or

blender -E help


Example output

found bundled python: /home/satishg/bin/blender-2.65a-linux-glibc27-x86_64/2.65/python
Blender Engine Listing:
    BLENDER_RENDER
    BLENDER_GAME
    CYCLES

[1]    Done                          ~/bin/blender-2.65a-linux-glibc27-x86_64/blender --engine help