this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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What do you need a system tray for? It has a drop-down control center on the top-right. That mirrors most of the functionality from a system tray that I would need.
This kind of attitude is precisely what rubs me the wrong way about gnome.
Like nevermind customization. I care about it because I am literally this. But most people just want their OS to work and get out of the way so they can get to doing work or playing games or looking at hentai or whatever it is their do with their computer and I get and respect that.
It is true that Gnome's control center can do a lot of things. All the integrated system functionality is there, as is the stuff for applications that are made FOR Gnome.
But the thing is. A lot of programmes that aren't Gnome-centered, that are DE-agnostic or even System-Agnostic? They expect a system tray, because every OS has had something like it since 1997, and implement functionality expecting it to be there, with some configurations and such only being accessible through the tray icon. And Gnome's general attitude to third party applications expecting something to be there is "fuck off, we don't care, the third party application should adapt to how we do things, but if you REALLY need this thing we decided is worthless, you can install this janky third party extension to get it I guess".
My choice for 'gets out of the way' would be something like Cinnamon. In my experience, Gnome does the opposite of getting out of the way, as a lot of basic functionality requires third party stuff. So in order to get things to work, if they aren't specifically part of the Gnome ecossystem, you'll have to spend time tinkering, and it's not 'tinkering for fun because I like coonfing', it's 'tinkering out of necessity to get this thing to work properly' which is not nice.
Hmmm alright I guess you laid out a pretty good argument. Even when I still used Windows I basically always ignored the system tray. I found it annoying and distracting. Didn’t even really notice it was gone when I started using Linux with GNOME.
I haven't had to use any application like that in a while, though I'm sure you're right that they exist. Could you give me an example of an application feature that's only accessible from the system tray?
Dropbox and MEGAsync, though I stopped using those late last year (switched to having an old laptop as a "home server" and using syncthing for backups) so maybe they changed since then. They were my ur-example for it, as I was still using them last time I tried gnome.
Lots of wine related things. Game clients and such. If wine can't find a tray it drops a window on a corner with the tray icons which works but is inelegant
Then there's programs that while absolutely usable without a tray, are just better if you have it. Steam for one, with a tray it lets you close out the main window(s) and then call up just the thing you want from the tray. AntimicroX too. A pair of electron apps like Heroic Launcher and Zapzap (a WhatsApp client) have troubleshooting things and configs on the tray icon, even if you can use them without that (or learn key shortcuts for the same function)