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Intel Linux Graphics

Sunbird in the system tray

The information below is believed to be accurate but is provided with absolutely no guarantee or warranty, either express or implied. If you use any of the information that follows you do so entirely at your own risk.

Sunbird becomes more useful when you can have it load automatically and sit in the system tray, something that's been possible in Windows for a while if you use Suntray. Now, thanks to a new release of Kdocker you can get broadly similar functionality in Linux.

First, you need to download and install the latest version of Kdocker from kdocker.sourceforge.net. Then, in KDE find your start-up folder - if you don't know where this is then go to the Control Centre >> System Administration >> Paths and make a note of the directory location. Then, in Konqueror, navigate to this directory, right-click in this folder and select "Create New >> File >> Link to Application", then go to the "Application" tab and for "Command:" type "kdocker -d [path to Sunbird]" (the -d makes Kdocker wait until KDE is loaded, otherwise there's no system tray to put Sunbird in). The path to sunbird will just be to wherever you unpacked your sunbird download - mine's "/home/[username]/MozApps/sunbird/sunbird". If you used an rpm installation then you should be able to use "sunbird" or "sunbird -calendar" for this. End your session and log back in and Sunbird should be in the system tray.

There are some differences in the action of this compared to native KDE apps - you can restore/minimise to tray by clicking the Sunbird icon in the systray, but clicking the close window button in Sunbird will close it completely, not put it in the tray (you need to click the minimise button to do this).

I don't know if this will work in Gnome, but Kdocker is supposed to be Gnome compatible, so as long as you know how to load programs at startup in Gnome it should be possible. If someone tells me how, I'll put details up here.