Missing indicators in 17.10 beta

[Paul Tansom]

** Dmitry Shachnev <mitya57 at ubuntu.com> [2017-09-30 10:37]:
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 11:38:28PM +0100, Paul Tansom wrote:
> > I'm sure I read that 17.10 with the Ubuntu'ified Gnome was going to have
> > indicators (at the top right) much like Unity. I've just upgraded a desktop
> > to the beta and found no sign of them. Sadly my Google Fu has not managed
> > to find anything about how they are implemented so I can fix the problem
> > rather than sort something out that does the same thing, but isn't actually
> > stock Ubuntu. Is anyone running the beta successfully and able to tell me
> > how they are setup?
> 
> Ubuntu 17.10 ships with gnome-shell-extension-appindicator [1], which adds
> support for application indicators and other applications that are using the
> StatusNotifierItem specification.
> 
> There are no such applications installed by default (I think), but if you
> install some such application from the repository, it should work. If that
> does not work, please make sure you have gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
> package installed.
> 
> It does *not* provide or support indicator-sound, indicator-network or any
> other indicators which were part of Unity. The standard GNOME Shell UI is used
> for these things.
> 
> > I also don't have the proper Gnome implementation that hides them away at
> > the bottom left - who hides an indicator? I'm glad car manufacturers don't
> > do that ;-)
> 
> That bottom left corner was not for indicators, but for legacy X11 tray items.
> It is something that Unity did not support since 2013. In GNOME 3.26, support
> for legacy tray has also been dropped [2].
> 
> [1]: https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
> [2]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785956
** end quote [Dmitry Shachnev]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this was an upgrade from an existing
17.04 install. As such I was expecting my HPLIP, Dropbox, Nextcloud and
mail indicators to be there (I would add Bluetooth and battery, but this
is on a desktop and I have Ubuntu MATE 17.10 on my laptop). The only
reason I mentioned the bottom left is because that's where these things
turned up when I tried the Gnome desktop on 17.04 before.

The only stuff I have there now is a mount point drop down, network,
sound and the power one which doesn't seem to work properly because the
shutdown and sleep buttons don't do anything (I hadn't noticed that when
I posted).

I may have more issues with this upgrade though as the Dash to Dock on
the left, apart from not looking particularly well implemented with
massive gaps around small icons, seems to keep getting a strange
ghosting of the icons on there.

I may have to try a clean install at some point to compare as things are
living down to my expectations so far. My first impressions of Unity
were much more favourable, but I'm determined to give Gnome a fair try.
I'll check for the gnome-shell-extension-appindicator package when I'm
next at the computer.

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