In latest Ubuntu-MATE (18.04/1.20.1/4.15.0-23) the “systray” aka “notification area” works very unusual and discomfortable. Right-left mouse clicks are messed, icons grow very big, etc.
I also got some alike problems in Fedora-MATE. When I reported it, I was told I have to turn “enable-sni-support” to “false”. It solved my problem instantly.
But not with Ubuntu-MATE. Setting the “enable-sni-support” to “false” doesn’t solve problems. They only changed minor weird details. Please help.
This “systray”/“notification area” is a very essential thing for any OS. I understand there may be need to do some support for special purposes, but the option to turn it off should just easily turn it off like it was in my case in Fedora.
(I could just “emulate” particular behaviour by primitively adding launchers next to systray, but this is so uncivilized)
The sad irony is that, when I was updating Ububtu, for some time, when packages were updated but OS wasn’t yet reloaded, this SNI disabled itself for a while. The indication of it was appearance of Bluetooth icon. I was soooooo glad. But not for long: after reboot, the SNI returned with all its flaws. Maybe there is a way to disable/erase this SNI in some configs?
Acording to Github link above, volume control problem is solved by running “mate-volume-control-applet”. But other problems are still unsolved. Please note I am not the only one concerned, this is confirmed at the link to Ubuntu MATE Facebook above where other people agree with me.
I’m trying to collect information and explanations here https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/811 and Fedora-MATE seem to get things right. They are good. Ubuntu-MATE continues to be spoiled. I am tired to explain this here and there. It’s sad. The problem seem to have simple solution (to switch off some component). While Clementine in Ubuntu-MATE still just can’t be accessed via systray if it’s minimized. It just disappears from taskbar and systray contain no menu item to call it back. Some say it is Clementine problem. This is impossible because elsewhere it works OK and in Ubuntu-MATE it also worked OK previously (before these SNI woes appeared).
Fedora and Ubuntu use different versions of GTK, and that actually affects the behavior of the notification area. They also probably use different versions of the sni library.
There’s also the issue that Ubuntu ships with indicators whereas Fedora doesn’t. That also affects how/where some tray icons show up (and their behavior).
The bug reports are helpful, and the mate devs have been working on this particular issue for a while. Part of the issue is that notification icons are actually no longer supported in GTK, so fixes and updates to the underlying libraries are a non-starter, so for now it’s mostly hacks and workarounds until a new solution is found.
Recently I was upgrading Ubuntu-MATE from 20 to 21.04
I've got the same situation. DURNING UPGRADING, at some period, THIS ISSUE DISAPPEARED UNTIL REBOOT. For some short time, I was happy. After reboot, not.
It's clear: upgrade process DISABLES SOMETHING during upgrade, that DISABLES THIS BUG.
I just to have to disable something in system. No need to wait for developers. But what to disable?