Dropbox and pCloud icons don't show in mate-panel tray

I’m running the MATE version.

I have a .xsession file, which starts a few applications (mate-panel, dropbox and pcloud, among other things) and finally launches fvwm as the window manager. When I login, mate-panel, dropbox and pcloud are started, but the dropbox and pcloud icons don’t show up in the mate-panel tray, even though pgrep confirms they are running.

When I quit fvwm (with the intention of logging out), the fvwm “session” ends, but I am not logged out. Instead, a new mate-desktop session starts up right away. Again, a panel is displayed, and this time, the dropbox and pcloud icons show up in the tray.

I’d like the dropbox and pcloud icons to show up even when I’m running just fvwm. Can someone please point me to where I should start in order to figure out why the icons show up only after fvwm quits and mate-session starts? Thanks!

Incidentally, when Zoom is running, the icon shows up both under fvwm and the MATE session. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to figure out how to include screenshots / links to screenshots in this post.

Not sure how to fix this. Using panels from one desktop in a different desktop is likely to have strange interactions. Just curious, why fvwm? and do you use the Mate desktop or was it just there as a result of installing the panel?

Thanks very much for your time!

Why fvwm? I guess because it (and before it, similar dinosaurs like twm and tvtwm) is what I’ve been using for nearly 30 years now (yes, I’m almost a dinosaur myself :-)). I’d rather not have to learn how to customise something else to behave just-the-way-I-like-it. Also, I understand it’s lightweight compared to more full-fledged desktops.

Re: your second question, the lightdm greeter gives me 3 session options: MATE, fvwm (comes with installing fvwm, I guess), and Xsession (because I put an appropriate file in /usr/share/xsessions). My default choice has been Xsession for many years. At times, I’ve had LXDE / LXQT installed instead of MATE. I’ve always started the panel that comes with the installed desktop (lxde-panel, lxqt-panel or mate-panel) from .xsession, but not the desktop itself, without this weirdness, until recently.

Truth be told, this surfaced only after my relatively recent move to Manjaro from Ubuntu-based distros. I thought it might be an icon path problem, but the icons do show up if I choose the MATE session instead of Xsession, but only in the second “sub-session” (with MATE desktop running). As I said, the first “sub-session” is just like my default Xsession (with fvwm), except that attempting to logout ends fvwm and starts the MATE desktop.

I added

(/usr/lib/mate-settings-daemon/mate-settings-daemon &)

to my .xsession file. Now both icons show up. I don’t understand exactly what action by mate-settings-daemon makes the difference, but my problem’s fixed for now.

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