[EN] Skype & Plasma 5

[dibl]

Has anyone got skype working on a 64-bit KDE system after installing kf5/plasma 5?  If so, here would be a great place to post the recipe.  Thanks! 

[dibl]

Replying to my own issue:


Message #237 near the end of this thread is good news for users of qt4 packages like skype that need to use the systemtray. The problem should be resolved in the near future.

[domicius]

Is Skype working but not showing in system tray or not working at all?

Skype works for me, but without showing up in system tray. And I have sni-qt 0.2.6 installed here, since I use the kdenext repo.

[dibl]

Since part of the functionality depends on the indicators in the system tray, I would say "not working".  It might or might not be the case that a skype process was running -- I don't remember checking on that.  I deleted skype from this system after I realized that it was pretty doomed for Plasma 5 functionality until the sni issue was resolved.  I can easily run skype on a Windows (or other Linux) VM, so it's not a big deal to do it that way in lieu of on the host OS.

[domicius]

Thanks for the clarification and I would agree indicators in system tray are integral to it's proper functioning and that's why I'm a bit bummed out with this whole Plasma 5 system tray mess...

Here's where I found the early warning (from more than a year ago), but I only found out about it after I was affected. And to this day, there still seem to be quite a few applications not working with my systray in Plasma 5 (Skype, blueproximity, HPLIP Status Service, VLC...).

Oh, and I just realized you're on a 64-bit and in Martin's blog post it says:

Note for Skype users: Skype does not provide a 64 bit package, because of that one also needs the sni-qt package in the 32 bit variant.

[dibl]

Yes 64-bit systems have always needed multiarch (or ia32-libs in ancient times) to run skype, teamviewer, google earth, etc.


Radiotray is the package I miss the most since I installed Plasma 5 -- it is so handy sitting there ready to play at all times.  But of course I can chase down my favorite streams and play them with VLC.  It's just not as cool and convenient that way.


I assume that further development of Plasma 5, plus the patch for sni-qt for qt5, will eventually bring back the missing functionality.

[der_bud]

Haven't tried that myself, but here is a short summary from Arch wiki, based on the same blog post domicius posted:

No system tray icons in Plasma 5
Plasma 5 uses a new specification to display items in the 'system tray' area called Status Notifier. To allow applications using the old xembed specification to display items the packages (GTK2) libappindicator-gtk2, (GTK3) libappindicator-gtk3, (Qt4) sni-qt, or (For 32-bit Qt applications like Skype) lib32-sni-qt may be required.

[dibl]

Right. However, here is the current state of affairs in Debian sid for those packages:

Code: [Select]

root@Hibiscus:/# apt-cache policy libappindicator-gtk2 
N: Unable to locate package libappindicator-gtk2
root@Hibiscus:/# apt-cache policy libappindicator-gtk3
N: Unable to locate package libappindicator-gtk3
root@Hibiscus:/# apt-cache policy sni-qt
sni-qt:
  Installed: 0.2.6-0r0
  Candidate: 0.2.6-0r0
  Version table:
 *** 0.2.6-0r0 0
        500 http://packages.siduction.org/kdenext/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
root@Hibiscus:/# apt-cache policy lib32-sni-qt
N: Unable to locate package lib32-sni-qt
root@Hibiscus:/#
So, we wait.
 

[domicius]

Well, even though these packages just go by different names in Debian (I have them installed: libappindicator1 and libappindicator3-1), I'm not exactly sure what's the situation here: as you can see from the source package, these haven't been updated in more than awhile and the upstream version seems "ages away", at least judging by the version number.

Good news is that #712938 is closed and sni-qt is in experimental now, I guess we now only wait for the most recent "fun times" situation to come to it's closure. I'm still not sure if this will solve everything, since my understanding is that GTK2 and GTK3 apps still need libappindicator and I just came here disappointed as I discovered yet another app I just started using that doesn't work correctly with my desktop: Workrave.

[hendrikL]

hi,
I use trayer as workaround

Code: [Select]

  LANG=C apt-cache policy trayer
trayer:
  Installed: 1.1.5-1
  Candidate: 1.1.5-1
  Version table:
 *** 1.1.5-1 0
        500 http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

It is working fine for me.
Easy to set up like

Code: [Select]

trayer --edge top --align right  --width 8 --transparent true --padding 5  --height 29  --margin 5

greetz hendrik

[domicius]

Hey Hendrik, thanks for the workaround. Someone already mentioned wmsystemtray but that wasn't working for me. This will have to do until the real support comes back.