Comments on: Things wrong with HPLIP’s systray applet

By: Strain

Strain — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:42:29 +0000

Hello. If you want to stop the icon from loading, in ubuntu go to: /etc/xdg/autostart/ and mv or delete the hplip-systray.desktop file. That should stop it.

By: troll

troll — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:29:03 +0000

Oh, I didn’t say it shouldn’t be included. It’s better than nothing. I’d just rather block the systray icon ever from appearing via some mechanism.

By: Kevin Kofler

Kevin Kofler — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:05:39 +0000

@tim: I agree that just not enabling hp-systray by default (by omitting the .desktop file) is probably the best solution for Fedora.

That tool sounds like a well-meaning feature, but unfortunately with some fatal design flaws.

@troll: While it’s obvious that hp-systray has design flaws which I’d consider showstoppers, I’d think twice before spitting on HPLIP if I were you. What other company develops GNU/Linux drivers for their printers and even multifunction devices (which is what this problem comes from in the first place, seeing that this tool interacts with hpfax) and releases them under a Free Software license, not as some binary blob?

By: tim

tim — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:54:50 +0000

No, I don’t think it can be opted out of (except to remove the package), although it will at least immediately exit if there are no HPLIP print/fax queues configured.

For Fedora I think we’ll ship the hp-systray program but not the desktop launcher so that it won’t start automatically.

I’ve been told the icon-as-window problem is avoided by running it with the −−qt4 option. *shrug*

By: jam

jam — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:42:26 +0000

I agree with you. It should not be that way.
I have not seen it, can the user opt not to have that program loaded at all ?. It should be the default not to have it loaded, in which case it could open a window asking for the same information.

By: troll

troll — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:51:24 +0000

HP is known for notoriously bad software. At one point they bundled full-blown Apache tomcat with their Windows “drivers” for a few laser printer models. It installed automatically without asking the user, as a service running with SYSTEM rights. On top of that the version installed had already multiple known security vulnerabilities, and had the bad habit of dossing Windows NT domain controllers down.

I seriously don’t think they will ever learn… That’s what you get for allowing pointy haired bosses to lead development while the developers are some underpaid interns that just passed Windows C#/.NET programming 101 at some local college, or “did some PHP for the local mom & pops shop” as their resumes likely say…