Yeah. I just dropped another repackaging repo for Wispr Flow. https://github.com/wispr-flow-linux/wispr-flow-linux

A lot of that is keyboard shortcuts for push-to-talk. Easy right?

X11 is mostly fine, but the world is moving into Wayland. Wayland doesn't have shortcuts native and relies on xdg-desktop-portal, which in turn relies on each backend to implement it's own version.

COSMIC from the Pop!OS team's xdg-desktop-cosmic doesn't support GlobalShortcuts yet (might now, haven't checked in a bit). So XWayland for them.

Tray icons? GNOME doesn't have a tray out of the box, but there's an extension. There's no standard for whether it's light mode or dark mode across distros and when you map out the options, no api's indicate whether the tray is light or dark while in light/dark mode. At some point you have to just accept it's not always perfect or patch in an override.

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WD-42 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot of us are happy gnome doesn’t support tray icons. We are sick of devs thinking their app is so important it needs a visual presence at all times. If I need your app I’ll bring it to the foreground, we have the technology.

Global shortcuts definitely a pain point with Wayland but the portals are making progress.

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aaddrick 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, I don't want want to take away from anyone. The COSMIC team is doing amazing and hard work. I started dev on claude-desktop-debian with Pop!OS COSMIC as my daily. We're just in a weird spot for that particular issue right now. In 3 years, it'll be something else. That's the nature of fragmentation.

While GNOME tray lovers and haters both exist, only one of those two groups is liable to submit an issue against my repo looking for help getting icons working correctly.

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jorvi 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> A lot of us are happy gnome doesn’t support tray icons.

A lot of us = very few people in total, apparently.

There's a reason Dash to Dock and AppIndicator are packaged by default on most Gnome distros and overwhelmingly installed on those that don't have it. Even Gnome itself has started development on a native systray, although in classic Gnome NIH fashion they either want to implement a new standard or are were even considering using the deprecated snixembed standard instead of using what 99% of Linux does :+)

(Technically they want it for pretty good reasons, but good luck forcing all Linux applications to implement yet another standard, especially the commercial applications)

	▲	hparadiz 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The tray icon dock/panel in KDE is fully removable. You can just delete it. So the opposite of that is also a thing. No one is forcing you to always have a visual presence of a program. Even Windows let's you hide tray icons forever if you want.

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CamperBob2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do I bring your app to the foreground if I can't see an icon anywhere? I just installed Ubuntu for the first time a few weeks ago and genuinely don't see how people are supposed to use it, coming from a Windows/Mac background. How does a Linux user know what's running, without going to a terminal and running top?

The lack of desktop UI affordances in the leading "user-friendly" Linux distribution should be seen as a five-alarm fire by anyone interested in promoting wider Linux acceptance on the desktop. There are reasons why Linux can't get past low single-digit adoption no matter how badly Apple and Microsoft screw their users, and I'm sure the half-assed desktop UI is one of them.

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WD-42 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Did you try pressing the super key

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bigyabai an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> How do I bring your app to the foreground if I can't see an icon anywhere?

On GNOME? Alt-tab, super overview, or click the dock icon. It's literally not any more complex than multitasking on an iPad.

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CamperBob2 an hour ago | parent [-]

It's literally not any more complex than multitasking on an iPad.

That point would hold some water if the iPad were intended as a first-class multitasking platform, like a desktop OS. I don't know what the 'super' key in GNOME is, and don't much care, because if that kind of thing isn't obvious it might as well not exist. Having never used *nix on a graphical desktop before, I'm just blown away by how primitive the experience is.

Fortunately Claude Code was happy to install dash-to-panel for me when I asked it what the deal was with this particular flavor of airline food.

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antonvs 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You might be happier with a consumer OS.

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WD-42 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh please. The super key is the windows key. You come across as someone who has never used a computer before.

	▲	kskdkwjdkwkkds 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I mean they admit being an AI user. Can’t expect much more from those guys.

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bigyabai an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't know what the 'super' key in GNOME is, and don't care

This is like having someone tell you that they refuse to use an iPad because the home button confuses them. That's your choice.

I've used GNOME professionally for 7 years now, and I've taught kids to use it at robotics workshops. If you can believe it, many of them are unable to use macOS and Windows at all, because their school districts don't buy them laptops anymore. I'm sorry that GNOME isn't a carbon copy of your favorite OS, but it's not hard to use whatsoever.

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jm4 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't like tray icons. What I like less is an app that runs in the background anyway when I didn't ask it to and that behavior is hidden. It's infuriating to "quit" an app and it's still there. At least gnome finally addressed that with the little background apps widget.