Yesterday I bit the bullet and upgraded my fairly stable Xubuntu install from 13.10 Saucy Salamander to 14.04 Trusty Tahr.
I had no pressing need to upgrade (aside from an the occasional reminder when I logged in that a new release was available) but since Trusty had been out for a few weeks I figured any show stopping bugs would be ironed out by now.
First, I have to comment on how painless the upgrade procedure has become, a couple of clicks and it was away. After about an hour or so spent downloading and installing updates, a reboot and a slightly extended initial login, everything seemed to be right where I left it. No longer are we faced fixing a bunch of small things that go awry during the upgrade process.
I did, however, find one minor annoyance. No longer did all my running apps (the ones that I want to anyway) show up in the notification area I have in the top left of my screen.
Missing Icons
Conspicuously missing were Network Manager, Dropbox, Spideroak, KeePass and perhaps a few more, leaving me with just the volume control and power indicator icons showing. This was true even though each of my apps appeared to be running after being correctly started at login.
Indicator Plugin
After a bit of poking around in the XFCE panel preferences I found that replacing the Notification Area applet with the Indicator Plugin applet all my application icons were restored.
This, however, left me with another dilemma, as Indicator Plugin also includes a bunch of icons for mail, bluetooth and keyboard that, although I could hide, I couldn’t easily remove. What I really wanted was for Notification Area to work the way it did before the upgrade.
Notification Area
After further investigation and a little google-fu, I found that by killing indicator-application-service my icons would reappear. A quick delve into ‘Sessions and Startup’ settings found in XFCE’s Settings Manager found this service (listed as Indicator Application) was started on login and by unticking the box next to it I could tell it not to start. Problem solved. Now my notification area looks the way I like it with grey and black icons showing and the more and out of place looking coloured icons nicely hidden away.
Session and Startup Properties
Problem: After upgrading to Xubuntu 14.04 some application icons no longer show in the notification area.
Solution: Stop indicator-application-service from starting at login.
Procedure:
- Open XFCE Settings Manager and navigate to Session and Startup preferences.
- Click on the Application Autostart Tab and scroll down to Indicator Application
- Untick the tickbox.
- Click close, log out and log back in again.
/pseudomorph 