fbpanel reviews

2007-04-24

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2010-04-20 – (version not recorded) ∞

I had been using fbpanel for a long time, and I kept on compiling it from scratch even when alternatives were available. I finally stopped when I had been nudged into using LXPanel – an fbpanel fork by the LXDE team.

LXDE suffers from “Not Invented Here“. They reach out and fork the codebase from other projects, apply their improvements and release the package as part of their suite. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it is something that irks me. LXDE’s basic philosophies are no different from any of the small projects they have forked, so to me it seems a duplication of effort to fork.

In the case of LXPanel vs fbpanel, lxpanel very quickly made several notable improvements over fbpanel, until fbpanel caught up. However, they did start to diverge philosophically I think. Well, those are nuances that don’t matter to this article. Let’s continue.

A while back, a user submitted the genmon plugin, which is a way for you to get the status text from any commandline into fbpanel. I leveraged it to show me the date. It worked very well, and I had hoped for a long time that it would be included in fbpanel by default. As of fbpanel 6.0, it is.

So for the mandatory annoyance..

./configure gave me:

Default value of 'glib_cflags' couldn't be set from '`RFS=$rfs scripts/rfs-pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0`'

So…

\smart  install  lib64glib2.0-devel

Nope..

./configure  --gtk_cflags=`gtk-config --cflags`

Nope

\gtk-config --cflags -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib64/glib/include -I/usr/include

hrm..

oh, that says 1.2, maybe I need gtk 2.0 [yep]

\su
\smart  install  lib64gtk+2.0_0-devel
./configure && \make && \make install

running fbpanel gives me:

fbpanel: can't load space plugin
fbpanel: can't load menu plugin
fbpanel: can't load space plugin
fbpanel: can't load taskbar plugin
fbpanel: can't load tray plugin
fbpanel: can't load genmon plugin

The plugins compiled and installed correctly to /usr/lib/fbpanel.. I can’t find any references on the net as to why this would happen. The online install docs don’t mention any special steps, and the inline help doesn’t say anything about specifying the location of the plugin directory.

Fuck this.. it’s just broken. Back to LXPanel!

.. and there’s no make uninstall. Sigh.

2008-08-25 – (version not recorded) ∞

2010-04-20 – 6.0 ∞

The genmon plugin is now included, yay!

smart install lib64gtk+2.0_0-devel
./configure && make && make install

running fbpanel gives me:

fbpanel: can't load space plugin
fbpanel: can't load menu plugin
fbpanel: can't load space plugin
fbpanel: can't load taskbar plugin
fbpanel: can't load tray plugin
fbpanel: can't load genmon plugin

The plugins compiled and installed correctly to /usr/lib/fbpanel

Fuck this.. it’s just broken. Back to LXPanel.

.. and there’s no make uninstall. Sigh.

earlier troubleshooting ∞

./configure gave me:

Default value of 'glib_cflags' couldn't be set from '`RFS=$rfs scripts/rfs-pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0`'
smart install lib64glib2.0-devel

Nope..

./configure --gtk_cflags=`gtk-config --cflags`

Nope

gtk-config --cflags
-I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib64/glib/include -I/usr/include

hrm..

oh, that says 1.2, maybe I need 2.0 [yep]

2009-03-25 – 4.12 ∞

  • Speed improvement on startup. Nice. =)

  • auto-hide

    • with Blackbox it’s not always on top so it’s not useful for me.
    • with Openbox it works as expected!

(date not recorded) – 4.11 ∞

fixes:

  • The blackness issue is fixed, and fbpanel is running perfectly!

outstanding annoyances:

  • Text overlaps the taskbar icons at the bottom.
  • It’s not always on top, so windows can overlap it.

  • Is there a way to prevent other applications from maximizing over it?

(date not recorded) – 4.10 ∞

  • It’s all black! I tried the default config to no avail.

(date not recorded) – 4.9 ∞

UPDATE: Another test on 2007-07-12 and everything is working just fine!

improvements
  • I can launch it from within KDE and it appears beneath the KDE panel. Very cool! =)

  • restarting fbpanel re-captures all of the tray icons. Score!

    • I’m annoyed that I can kill it with Alt-F4. Then restarting it won’t re-capture the icons. I have to kill it and re-launch it for that to work. Strange!
issues

  • some of the icons are missing.. so the default install looks a bit wonky. =/

(date not recorded) – 4.8 ∞

I get a crazy amount of errors trying to make it, because ./configure does not check for dependencies

apt-get install libgtk+1.2-devel

The following extra packages will be installed:

libglib1.2-devel libx11_6-devel libxau6-devel libxdmcp6-devel libxext6-devel libxi6-devel x11-proto-devel

The following NEW packages will be installed:

libglib1.2-devel libgtk+1.2-devel libx11_6-devel libxau6-devel libxdmcp6-devel libxext6-devel libxi6-devel x11-proto-devel

apt-get install libglib2.0_0-devel

nope. Oops, I wasn’t paying attention, I need GTK+ 2.0

apt-get install libgtk+2.0_0-devel

(lots of dependencies and upgrades)

make
CC   systray/main.o
main.c:5:29: error: X11/Xmu/WinUtil.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [main.o] Error 1
make: *** [systray] Error 2
apt-get install libxorg-x11-devel

(lots of dependencies and upgrades)

do a complete system update, also install Fluxbox.

ok, now it works. =)

KDE tray icons do not appear

KGPG, klipper, etc.

(date not recorded) – 4.5 ∞

It seems to segfault a LOT, when I’m using tray icon-related stuff. KGPG and Kmix are the applications I was running and killing to segfault it. Launching Kmix will often segfault it. To solve this, my solution is to run fbpanel like so:

until fbpanel; do :; done

Apparently fixed in fbpanel 4.8

Skype was also running in the background but it didn’t need to be re-launched to be seen and put in the tray.

  • It ought to have a GUI for configuring everything.

    • It’s on the list of things to do..

  • it ought to be able to reload its config – maybe like bbkeys does (every two seconds, but that seems aggressive)

    • there’s no point since it can be restarted easily
  • Text overlaps the taskbar icons at the bottom.
  • It’s not always on top, so windows can overlap it.
  • Is there a way to prevent other applications from maximizing over it?

  • The ‘show desktop’ (minimize all) also minimizes fbpanel.

  • Cannot right-click on a taskbar item and press c to close. =/

    • solved in a later version. =)

There must be some configurating thing to keep it always on top and never maximized.

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