Normally, the main interface to UPDD tools and settings is through the UPDD Daemon menu, and under Linux a reserved screen area known as the Notification Area can be used to show these menu icons. Under macOS this area is known as the menu bar and under Windows the system tray, so all three main stream Operating Systems offer a similar application icon location.
However, since updd version 6.0.766 (Sept 2022), and with tests carried out on Ubuntu 22.04 and Centos 8 Stream, we have concluded that the use of this area by 3rd party / non system applications on Linux is difficult to achieve or certainly seems to be discouraged.
The installer launches the Daemon process in exactly the same why as other background processes that do run, but the Daemon process is unable to show its icon in this area. Investigations into this issue is made even more complex when you consider the various desktop managers and the different behaviours of these managers.
Therefore, our current position is that Linux does not readily support the use of system tray icons for 3rd party applications. For this reason, the UPDD system tray icon & menu icon is deemed to be not available in Linux
Fortunately, other methods exist to invoke all of the UPDD utilities and functions.
All the options normally found in the system tray menu to load the GUI dialogs are supported by the individual daemon command line options. The standard driver command line interface utility is also available under Linux, once the correct environment is set.
There is also an experimental UPDD Daemon desktop icon option to run UPDD Daemon from an application.
All UPDD applications can be launched from a terminal, such as the Console, or invoked from link created on your desktop,
Pre UPDD version 6.0.766 notes
This section has been superseded by the notes above, but have been retained for reference purposes only, as an indication of the difficulty in getting the menu icon to appear.
UPDD installation implements various launch methods for UPDD Daemon depending on the method deemed appropriate for the system in use. Since UPDD V6 version 397 the preferred launching method is via xdg autostart if /etc/xdg/autostart folder exists. If the autostart feature is available but invoked via a non standard location see here. If this feature does not exist other methods, with varying degrees of success, are employed. The install script is used to set the launch method and can be viewed / modified as required.
Although the notification area is generally supported, some distributions may require it to be manually enabled, require special configuration, have incomplete support or unfortunately in some cases may not support it.
On systems where the system tray menu is unavailable, all UPDD Daemon menu options (apart from license purchase / registration)
can be accessed from the command line by using either upddutils or UPDD Calibrate.
However, for users who prefer the graphical interface, and to
support license purchase / registration, a number of options have been added to UPDD Daemon to invoke the utilities.
Notification Area
In distributions where the notification area is available, a reboot may be required for the UPDD Daemon icon to appear following the initial installation.
The actual placement varies with different desktop managers:
The screen shot below is taken from a Ubuntu system with the Unity desktop manager and shows the UPDD Daemon icon and menu and UPDD Gestures icon.
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The screen shots below are taken from CentOS (and we believe RedHat is the same) and shows the single notification area indicating there are 2 system tray menu items which are shown when selected. |
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Not all systems have the notification area enabled by default.
In this case, you will need to consult the documentation for your distribution to determine how to install and or enable this feature.