Transparent Gnome tray icons have white background!

[seb_42]

Hello !

I'm on Lucid, and I have also this problem (I can see it with VLC or the Network Manager).

I post to notice that :

- I have a nVidia 7600 card (maybe this is related to the way transparency is handled with nvidia cards ?)

- the "white" color correspond to the color indicated in system->preferences->appearance->theme->customize...->Colors->Window_ Background. (I'm translated from Ubuntu in French, maybe the names are slightly different)

[haydoni]

I see this with open office (systray quickstarter), vlc (kind of pointless - but now seems to be default behaviour), spotify (under wine). The "show desktop" icon exhibits similar, but apparently intentional, behaviour...

Pretty crazy that the Gnome "bug", if that's what it is, is 5 years old!

[Marctwo]

If those in charge are planning to replace this intuitive systray interface with the clunky app indicator then all this is great for them as users will at least appreciate the nice looking icons...

This didn't really bother me but I do use the systray in AWN as I intend to ditch the buggy gnome panels and their randomly disappearing applets anyway.

[seb_42]

Back after some tests. I'm more and more convinced that the problem is related to nvidia drivers...

I'm in dual screen and I've realized that, in my configuration, whatever driver I use (96, 173, or current (ie 195) ), the problem only appears when Xinerama is enabled !

There is no longer the "white background bug" when Xinerama is disabled, even in dual screen. In my case, I do need Xinerama, so I prefer having this "bug" than disabling Xinerama, but maybe you should consider disabling it, if it's too annoying (or at least to know if there is the same behavior with your configuration)

[G_u_s]

My card is Intel...

[seb_42]

Ok, so we can only conclude it's a really weird bug xD

I think it is the way Gnome handle transparency that is the problem. Sometimes, it computes itself the colors, and sometimes asks the graphic card. And maybe this decision depends on a lot of complex factors, that's why some apparently unrelated modifications can affect the behavior. :/

[Marctwo]

In my limited experience, this is only an issue with the systray applet in the gnome-panels. Icons elsewhere on the panels may be subject to other bugs but they at least preserve their transparency. Icons in systray applets on other docks/panels also preserve their transparency. This has really obvious implications...

[seb_42]

Hello all ! I'm very very happy

Problem solved ! (well, in my configuration, at least. Hope that would work for you too)

I've downloaded the source code of the notification-area-applet (the one that has the background bug, part of the gnome-panel package) and the source code of the new indicator-applet, that has a correct background.

I compared both, try a lot of modifications without success, but finally succeeded in having something working ! (Even if finally, I didn't used any code from the working applet... I've just commented some code, I don't really understand how, but it seems to work xD)

Try this and give some feedback :

1) Right click on the notification area (the "systray", as it is erroneously called) and remove it from the panel.

2) VERY IMPORTANT : create a backup of a file you'll modify later :

cd /usr/lib/gnome-panel
sudo cp notification-area-applet notification-area-applet.bak

3) Download the attachment

4) Replace the file /usr/lib/gnome-panel/notification-area-applet by the one in the archive you've downloaded in 3)

5) Rigth-click on your panel, select Add..., and add a "Notification area". If the bug is corrected, it's finished !! If a problem occurs (which would be the case, in my opinion...), remove the newly added applet (if any), and continue to next step.

6) You'll have to compile yourself the package fixed. Don't worry, it isn't (too much) complicated : just follow the following steps

7) Download the necessary packages :

sudo apt-get install dpkg libgtk2.0-dev liborbit2-dev libbonoboui2-dev libgnome-desktop-dev libwnck-dev libgconf2-dev libgconf2.0-cil-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libcanberra-gtk-dev librsvg2-dev libgweather-dev

8 ) download the source code of gnome-panel

sudo apt-get source gnome-panel

9) Go to the directory of the sources :

cd ~/gnome-panel-2.30.2/

10) Configure your future compilation :

sudo ./configure

11) If "./configure" tells you that some packages are missing, install them. I've tried to be exhaustive on step 8 ), but maybe I failed xD. The packages to install have always a name like libXXXX-dev. Go back to step 10), until it works

12) Replace the applets/notification-area/na-tray-child.c file by the one on the attachment.

13) Compile all

sudo make

14) Install the new notification area

cd applets/notification-area
sudo make install

15) Put it in the good place (don't understand why it isn't already the case...)

sudo cp /usr/local/libexec/notification-area-applet /usr/lib/gnome-panel/notification-area-applet

16) Same as step 5)

Hope this will work for you !

[hegomir]

Thank you! The above solution worked for me! And it only took a second! It just worked after replacing notification-area-applet (a.k.a. the 6th step way).

Thank you so much!

Oh, and I'm using lucid lynx, with ati 56xx series.

[G_u_s]

Hello all ! I'm very very happy

Problem solved ! (well, in my configuration, at least. Hope that would work for you too)

[...]

Try this and give some feedback :

[...]

Hope this will work for you !

Well, friend, it did indeed work! I had to do the whole procedure, and add extra dependencies, but as far as I can tell, the bug is gone (I've tested with VLC, I can't remember what the other problematic programs were, silly me).

Many thanks, maybe you should submit your .c to the development team, and/or ask this tutorial to be cited in a FAQ somewhere.

Again, many thanks for taking the time to do this =)