can't add KDE apps to GNOME dock

[Justin Karneges]

Hi,

I clean installed Ubuntu 18.04 yesterday and noticed I couldn't add KDE apps to the GNOME dock. Basically, the "Add to Favorites" option is missing from the right-click menu of dock icons of currently-running KDE apps.

If I search for a KDE app using the "Show Applications" button, and right-click on an app in the search results before running it, that menu does contain "Add to Favorites". However, if this is used, the added app behaves incorrectly, in that clicking on its icon in the dock always launches a new instance rather than bringing any existing instance to the front.

Previously I used Ubuntu 14.04 (with Unity) and KDE apps could be added to the dock and managed as expected (i.e. clicking app icon when app is running brought it to the front).

Some searching around suggests this might be related to missing StartWMClass fields in the .desktop files of the KDE apps. I added StartWMClass=kate to /usr/share/applications/org.kde.kate.desktop and that seemed to fix the problem. However this didn't work for Konsole, so there might be more to fixing this in general.

I think this is probably either a KDE bug (they need to correct all their .desktop files?), a GNOME bug, or at the very least an Ubuntu-level regression in the Unity->GNOME transition that may justify taking action somewhere.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue looks similar to e.g https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738672 and those applications probably need to be fixed

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

@seb128
>The issue looks similar to e.g https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738672 and those applications probably need to be fixed

GNOMEs Hell should be fixed, not the applications.

In all other desktops with dock - Unity, MATE (with Mutiny panel layout) - it works as expected.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[minphr (lp723h)]

I have managed to workaround this problem in Ubuntu 19.10
by creating a symlink inside directory /usr/share/applications
executed as root in terminal

ln -s org.kde.ksysguard.desktop ksysguard.desktop

ln -s org.kde.kexi-3.1.desktop kexi-3.1.desktop

the only side effect is that now they appear twice in installed applications menu

[prkos (prkos)]

For me on 19.10 the workaround of adding to Favorites by searching through the shell view works, as shown in this answer:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1166171/ubuntu-18-04-add-to-favorites-missing-for-certain-qt-based-applications#answer-1223635

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Is this a problem in Ubuntu 20.04?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Daniel, the results of some brief tests installing applications such as kate, konsole, konversation and krusader were not consistent with respect to adding to and removing from the dock as a favourite.

Some applications gave me both the add and remove options, one application gave just a remove option while another gave me neither option.

The work around of right clicking on a search result worked for all the applications that I tested while using Ubuntu 20.04.1.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Apologies, to clarify comment #9, the inconsistent results were when right clicking on the dock icon.

[Johannes Kalliauer (jokalliauer1989)]

The user can make a workaround, by using the <filename>.desktop the same as the `WM_CASS` (returned by the command `xprop`).

e.g.
- for Doplin use `dolphin.desktop`
- for JabRef use `org.jabref.gui.JabRefMain.desktop`

source&details: https://askubuntu.com/a/1347954/676490