So, we now have GNOME 3.26, and the GNOME devs had a little surprise
present for users: The systray is gone for good.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/09/will-you-miss-gnome-legacy-tray
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785956
This has implications for desktop apps. For example, hplip, which I
maintain, will create an ugly pop-up during startup of its hp-systray
application ("No system tray detected on this system. Unable to start,
exiting.").
I could work around the hplip problem for Factory by putting an
"OnlyShowIn" tag in the autostart file of hp-systray.
(https://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apb.html)
Question 1: The systray can be re-enabled by installing GNOME
extensions like "TopIcons Plus" (side note: TopIcons Plus needs to be
updated to the latest version for this to work under 3.26). If I apply
the above workaround, the hplip icon will be gone for users of such
extensions, too, unless they edit the autostart file. I'd like to
collect opinions on that - should hp-systray be disabled for GNOME, or
not?
Question 2: Should I exclude only GNOME; or are there other desktops
that also finished off the systray (KDE??)?
Another possible "fix" would be to just have hp-systray exit silently
when no systray was detected. This is what other applications seem to
do. Again, opinions welcome.
Martin
<rant>
I really miss the tray, and I fail to understand the GNOME devs'
motivation behind nuking it. The hplip icon may not be important to
many, but e.g. the icon for the Pidgin GNOME integration is really
crucial in my workflow for showing/hiding pidgin's windows, quickly
switching status, etc. I've no clue what replacement for this
functionality the GNOME devs have in mind. The tray is (was) not only
about notifications, as they seem to think.
</rant>
--
Dr. Martin Wilck