I can confirm this too, I have a fully expanded panel, and it happens even when the applets are locked. Basically, any right aligned applet will be in a random (but still right aligned) position on login.

Problem still exists in 2.20.0.1, exactly as Tom described.

For other reasons, i have modified my physical workspace, and now have the primary monitor on the left, secondary on the right with panels on the primary monitor. In this setup, i haven't seen this bug occur yet. My old setup was primary on right, secondary on left. In both cases the screens were the same resolution (1680x1050)

I can confirm this bug in gnome 2.20.1, Ubuntu 7.10. All my applets are locked to the panel, and yet, they've moved around randomly after reboot. This has been going on for two days. 

The only new "task", I've been undertaking during these two days has been playing Frozen Bubbles in fullscreen. Hope this information is of some use.

I've been experiencing this issue on Fedora 8 since it's release.
gnome-panel-2.20.2-1.fc8.x86_64
metacity-2.20.1-1.fc8.x86_64

But I just noticed a weird bug that may or may not be related:

If I slowly drag a window close to the right edge of the screen, the window is not "grabbed" by the edge.  It eventually grabs 128 pixels off the right edge of the screen.

Now, (my panel is on the bottom of the screen) if I drag a window while sliding it along/touching the panel, the same bug above happens while dragging to the right, but on dragging the window back to the left, as soon as the window edge hits the actual edge, it grabs!

It would interesting to know if this happens to other people or not and hopefully help figure out the root of the bug.

I have this problem as well. I am using Ubuntu 7.10/Gnome 2.20.1.
Almost every time I boot, all my panel's activators, applets like the system monitor are in random order. The only thing that stays always in the same place is "Application|Places|System" main menu. It is always on the left side. Everything else is jumping here and there everytime I restart system. 
It, actually, does not matter is my "launchers" (whatever it is called) are locked on the panel or not. 
I must admit, this is very annoying bug :(

I can confirm this bug with gnome 2.20.2/gnome-panel 2.20.1 on solaris as well.

A work around (so it appears) is to order the items the way you want them on the panel, expand the panel (if you have a panel that is not expanded that this problem is occurring on) and then disable the expand option again.

I confirm this again. I've had this issue for as long as I remember.
current version Gnome 2.22.1 + gnome-panel 2.22.1.3 on Ubuntu Hardy
- my panels are allways expanded
- happens mostly after resolution changes
- locking the icons does not help
- locking the whole panel (gconftool -t bool --set /apps/panel/global/locked_down true) does not help either
- the basic Music Applet (2.2.1) icon sometimes moves after the music software is closed (and that panel item gets reverted back to a single icon)

*** Bug 550151 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

As said in my bug : still present in 2.22.2. And we can't really say "ok, next boot it will be messed up".

I think that it's related to resolution change. A good thing to test that is to fill your panel with applets so that they have just enough place then you change your monitor to a lower resolution.

Applets will be stretched (and the panel will sometimes become unusable).

Then, when you go back to your previous resolution, applets will be completeley and randomly mixed. 

This happens when you play some fullscreen games and I suspect that it might be strongly related.

hmmmmm, interesting.
I don't play, but I had some bugs with gnome resolution and had to change it after a login.
So maybe yes, it's a clue.

Yes, this is definitely related to resolution change.
Two days ago, I've installed Ubuntu 8.04.1 with most recent updates. On top panel I have everything as in default plus few launchers on left and system monitor. When I connected to this machine using VNC I had to change resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. Then back to 1280, then I switched to some other one. I do not remember when exactly that happened, but now my top panel is a mess :(

Please, do something with it. When my friends look at it they say: how can you tell us Linux/Ubuntu is ready for desktop users if it cannot handle such a basic stuff like order on desktop panel. (Second notice was about the damn problem with icons on Gnome desktop: CD/DVD icon and pendrive one are always one on each other, I have never seen such a stupid bugs like those on Windows).

Changing the title and confirming this bug.


As a side note, I think it only happens when there's more applet in your panel than allowed by your resolution. (so if you have more than 800px of applets and switch to 800x600).

I don't know the internals of gnome-panel but, intuitively, I would solve this by always remembering the position of the applet at the resolution in which it was added to the panel. If the resolution is lower, the display function should try to put things but it should not modify the stored value for the position.

In fact, this is part of a wider bug when panel is unusable if it contains more applet than its size allow to have.

>As a side note, I think it only happens when there's 
>more applet in your panel than allowed by your resolution.

That was not my case. 1024x768 was the lowest resolution I have used, and that was more than enough for items on my panel. 

I think the entire concept is wrong!

Panel should only remember the ORDER and ALIGN (left/top=leading or right/bottom=trailing), not the position. If someone would like to have some space between items, one could use separator.

I suspect, in some case, that the resolution is quickly changed after gdm login (or when auto login is enabled) when X start. Also, don't forget that some application set a lower resolution (like games) even if you don't realize it.

Well, anyway, the "change resolution" is a reproducible bug. And I believe that if this one is fixed, the "random applet at boot" will also be fixed. But it's only an intuition.

Well I don't change my resolution beyond what it set in the X config. GDM, the desktop... they all use the same resolution. Point being, I see the problem regardless of the fact that I do not change resolutions after GDM login. I don't play video games either so to the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no resolution change from the time the desktop starts to the time it ends. I don't believe the resolution changes for a split second upon the start of your desktop, I don't buy that at all but I could be wrong. I usually see this bug on panels that have the "Expand" check box unchecked so that you get a centered "only use space that is needed" panel. 

I do think this bug has existed way too long and has had little to no attention beyond users talking about what they think is wrong.

Really, really, why can't we have a release which focuses on actually FIXING bugs like this one rather than cramming new little-used features??  Let's have a 2.26 with NO new features and all (ok, most) those annoying bugs fixed !!

(In reply to comment #19)
> Well I don't change my resolution beyond what it set in the X config. GDM, the
> desktop... they all use the same resolution. Point being, I see the problem
> regardless of the fact that I do not change resolutions after GDM login. I
> don't play video games either so to the best of my knowledge, there is
> absolutely no resolution change from the time the desktop starts to the time it
> ends. I don't believe the resolution changes for a split second upon the start
> of your desktop, I don't buy that at all but I could be wrong. I usually see
> this bug on panels that have the "Expand" check box unchecked so that you get a
> centered "only use space that is needed" panel. 
> 
> I do think this bug has existed way too long and has had little to no attention
> beyond users talking about what they think is wrong.
> 

Are you choking?

This IS a serious bug. If it doesn't occur with your panel, that's fine for you. But that doesn't mean nobody else does not have this problem, too. Here the icons are moving to different positions after changing screen resolution for example.

If you don't do presentations, that's fine. But there are lots of people who do presentations and have to change screen resolution!

That's one of the most annoying bugs I can think of. Beginners think that their OS is broken because of the the moving icons/applets.

Do you still have a Gnome bounty somewhere? I want to donate money so maybe it's more interesting for some developers that this bug gets corrected.

(In reply to comment #21)
> Are you choking?
> 
> This IS a serious bug. If it doesn't occur with your panel, that's fine for
> you. But that doesn't mean nobody else does not have this problem, too. Here
> the icons are moving to different positions after changing screen resolution
> for example.
> 
> If you don't do presentations, that's fine. But there are lots of people who do
> presentations and have to change screen resolution!
> 
> That's one of the most annoying bugs I can think of. Beginners think that their
> OS is broken because of the the moving icons/applets.
> 
> Do you still have a Gnome bounty somewhere? I want to donate money so maybe
> it's more interesting for some developers that this bug gets corrected.
> 

I think you misunderstood my comment. I know this bug exists and I know it's annoying and that is my point with the very last remark, it has existed for a long time with little to no attention as far as I can tell beyond the users talking about it. I don't know the direct cause of it, I just know I have repeatedly seen this bug pop up for years now and I do not do any special resolution changes on my workstations.

I can confirm this bug exactly as in comment #2, i.e. any right aligned applet will be in a random (but still right aligned) position on login, on an expanded panel.

gnome-panel-2.24.2-1.fc10.i386, Fedora 10.

*** Bug 534339 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 569416 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 314235 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Note that bug #314235 has a patch for this; it needs to be tested with the latest code.

*** Bug 575562 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hm... nobody posted the exact numbers. Here's a copy and paste from my comment over on Launchpad <https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/44082>



This happens to me, actually pretty much every time I log in. For me, the situation is that my laptop's screen runs at 1280x800 and my external monitor runs at 1920x1200, and I switch between the two all the time mid-session. I never use twinview; I just disable one monitor and enable the other.

This is with The Default Panel Configuration in Jaunty. I usually just delete those launcher applets and leave it be. I kept an eye on the panel configuration with gconf-editor.

Initially, applets are placed correctly as copied from default_setup...
/apps/panel/default_setup/applets/notification_area:
locked:1
panel_right_stick:1
position:5

Note that each applet is placed from right to left, with "position" incrementing from 0 where 0 is rightmost.

I checked later (sorry, STILL hunting for the pattern) and found this...
/apps/panel/applets/notification_area_screen_0:
locked:1
panel_right_stick:0 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
position:1279

The bottom panel also falls apart in the same way. They both do so at the same time.

This suggests to me that the issue is indeed a tangible bug, rather than a design flaw, so it isn't as scary as it sounds. (Although I wonder if branching xfce panel would be a more maintainable solution).

I tried starting the applet positions on the right side from 1 instead of 0, but it made no difference. I also tried positioning only the clock and the Hamster applet on the right, which did no good as even those two became disorganized over time.
( Although it looked cleaner with the notifications beside the menu :) )

Notice that the posititons end up relative to the positions on my laptop's screen, but also a little bit off.

This bug happening to me in gnome 2.26.1 in ubuntu 9.04.

It seems to happen after a restart, both when the panels are locked and unlocked. and when changing resolution or not changing resolution before a restart.

It happens the most when running ubuntu in virtualbox due to its dynamic nature of handling resolutions. (Auto resize when resize the vm window).

This bug is open for more than three years and it affects many users.
Has anyone a status update on it or can describe the source of the problem?

There is a patch in bug #314235.  Could you please test it?

I have verified that the patch in bug #314235 does indeed fix the problem. I had to use gconf-editor to set the relative order of the right stuck applets in my existing configuration, setting fast-user-switch to 0, clock to 1, and so on. Now they are stable across switching from laptop to tablet mode, and over log-out and log-in.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=51170&action=view

Created attachment 141348 [details] [review]
Patch from Gnome Bug 314235 ported to 2.26.0 code

I have ported the patch written by Mark McLoughlin for bug 314235 to 2.26.0 code, the gnome-panel code is almost the same it's just moved a bit, so this is really his patch, I just dusted it off for Ubuntu One Hundred Paper Cuts.

His original patch seems to address the substance of this bug by preventing the panel from persisting changed icon positions. Since bug 314235 was closed as a duplicate several years ago I think this patch was lost or forgotten.

I've built in my Ubuntu PPA and have been testing it for a month:
https://launchpad.net/~ryan.maki/+archive/ppa

My observations regarding this patch:
1) The icons no longer re-arrange when resizing the screen or attaching external monitors, etc.
2) Since the position is stored as a left offset there are still some problems with applets that dynamically resize, such as Notification Area. Iff these are a new size when you start the desktop at a new resolution they will still move left and right a bit, but won't appear on the other side of the screen as they were wont to do before.
3) I have tested this further by manually updating the icon positions as simple integers, in GConf I set them locked right, then just used the offset to specify the order: 0 for Fast User, 1 for Clock, 2 for Notification Area, and so on, and this completely prevents the applets from re-arranging.

More details are found in the associated Launchpad issue # 44082: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/44082

Why hasn't this been committed to 2.28? Could we at least get this in 2.28.1?

Totally agree with Marcus. This is a major usability problem to the point I ended up hacking an ugly shell script in hope of remaining productive in Linux.

When will the Gnome project finally get it? If they wish to broaden their user-base they need to treat Gnome not as their personal sandbox for academic experimentation, adding new and largely untested (if not buggy) features with every new iteratoin while by and large ignoring core problems, and focus on show-stopping problems such as this one. For over *three* years this bug has been seriously affecting people's usability--don't you think it's about time to get this and other similar problems finally fixed?

I am a developer and a user and have been doing both for quite some time, contributing patches to various FOSS projects. As a user I can tell you users don't need another feature from Gnome. They need a system that is streamlined (e.g. same behavior works across all Gnome tools/applications, such as drag-n-drop, or copy/paste), and that fixes its core issues that thwart usability.

So, if your 2.28 roadmap has all these new and grandiose features--I am not interested. I finally patched and tweaked Gnome to the point it is usable (even though half of these are effectively ugly hacks) and the thought of having to do all this all over again just because 3-year-old core functionality has not been included in the roadmap makes my head spin...

I found this ticket while hunting for a gnome-panel applet which might be able to "fill" empty horizontal space to keep other unlocked applets properly aligned to left and right edges of a panel.

I use Ubuntu 9.0.4 in Sun VirtualBox. My desktop resolution changes very frequently as I page in and out of the VM's full-screen mode. Consequently, I see the issue of repositioned and/or reordered right-aligned applets ALL THE TIME. I'm literally losing productivity with the amount of time I spend fooling around with their positioning.

I'd send whoever commits a patch for this bug to trunk before Nov 15, 2009 $50 USD. Seriously. Fix it, please. It's the most obvious usability bug I've run into with gnome desktop over the course of 5 years.

This is ridiculous.  The bug is over three(!) years old, *really* annoying, and almost every Gnome user I know was already bitten by it.  And there's even a (trivial) patch in existence.  Why has the Gnome kindergarten still not been able to fix that one?  I wholeheartedly agree with the previous commenters and am suggesting Linux newbies to use KDE instead.  Referring to a quote from Jeremy Blosser, "Both KDE and Gnome suck.  KDE just sucks less."

FWIW, the reason the patch was not applied is that the person who wrote it was a gnome-panel maintainer and there must be a reason he didn't commit it. I've looked at the patch for some time to figure out why it's working and/or why it wasn't good for Mark, and failed to do so so far. If someone cares to look at it and detail why it's working and why it's right, please go ahead.

So can more people please test the patch in comment 34 extensively with git master and add a comment here? Thanks in advance.

(In reply to comment #39)
> FWIW, the reason the patch was not applied is that the person who wrote it was
> a gnome-panel maintainer and there must be a reason he didn't commit it. 

I believe the main reason this was not committed by Mark relates to the bug it was originally attached to. That bug was closed as a duplicate many years ago, and it seems that once that happened this particular patch was lost. I'm not a Gnome maintainer, not by a long shot, but that seems to be what happened.

I've been running this patch on Ubuntu 9.04 for many months now and it hasn't caused any problems on five machines and two VMs. I can re-size my desktop and change monitor layouts without my icons bouncing all over the screen.

I am preparing to port it again, this time to Ubuntu 9.10 and build another PPA package. Hopefully whatever issues are holding up the patch can be resolved eventually, because it does seem to improve the situation.

Mark's patch applies cleanly on gnome-panel-2.28.0. I am using it for two months without problems (previously on version 2.26).

Please apply the patch at last!! It works for me.

I work in a Linux support service and I can confirm that this issue appears on almost all desktop users who have every resized their resolution. Please fix it and make the panel items stay where they should stay.

Vincent,

Please go ahead and commit this. The reason the original developer didn't commit it was because he could not reproduce the issue at the time (see Mark's comments for the patch in the resolved duplicate bug). Since the other commenter's here and in the duplicate bug are able to reproduce it, and indicate that this patch resolves the issue, I believe this patch warrants review by a maintainer. We'd appreciate your reconsideration of the patch.

Would anyone be so kind as to tell me the status of this bug? Has the patch been committed?

The Launchpad bug has 56 duplicates and 129 people have marked themselves as being affected by this issue..

This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.

Thanks a lot =)

I love your commitment - 4 years to solve a bug, just fantastic. KDE would have released a 5.0 in this time, Microsoft would have come up with a new version, meanwhile you people were busy adding a few buttons to a program which nobody cares about. 

Imagine what would have happened if Microsoft or KDE did not fix something like this for 4 years. We would be trolling about this on the whole internet, but the rules don't apply to us ain't it?

TO GNOME developers: This is what the users care about. Serve the users and be served in turn.

mirnazish: I wouldn't be trolling, as I know the reality of software development. Microsoft and KDE? Yawn.
Uh wait, was there a hidden offer in your comment to co-maintain gnome-panel so things get going a bit faster in the future? Cool! Thanks for helping instead of just standing outside and complaining!

Also see http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct. The Code of Conduct basically mentions: respectful, considerate, patient, assume people mean well, be concise.

(In reply to comment #50)
> mirnazish: I wouldn't be trolling, as I know the reality of software
> development. Microsoft and KDE? Yawn.
> Uh wait, was there a hidden offer in your comment to co-maintain gnome-panel so
> things get going a bit faster in the future? Cool! Thanks for helping instead
> of just standing outside and complaining!
> 
> Also see http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct. The Code of Conduct basically
> mentions: respectful, considerate, patient, assume people mean well, be
> concise.

With all due respect to you and all the GNOME developers - Waiting 4 years for a bug fix - isn't that being patient and considerate all along.

I love GNOME and I want it to be Number 1. The fact that I'm writing this post is a testimony to that. Little quirks like this take away the users from us.

I would love to see a code of conduct for developers too, where developers should adhere to strict time lines when resolving bugs.

P.S: If nobody points out if something is going wrong with you, it simply means they have given up on you. I for sure haven't given up on GNOME.

[getting offtopic here, sorry for all others on the CC list]

(In reply to comment #51)
> I would love to see a code of conduct for developers too, where developers
> should adhere to strict time lines when resolving bugs.

I would immediately quit a project in that case and lots of other people too as developing software in your free time should still be fun instead of duty.
I prefer to decide on my own how much time I spend on what in my free time instead of random people telling me "You are the maintainer and there are 200 open bugs left, you have to fix them in the next month according to the rules. Please stop having a reallife now for the next months and become even more overworked and grumpy than you already are."

I seriously think that you don't get the problem: Manpower resources are *limited*. Always.

So what are your contributions to open source in the past that you are in a position to propose something like that? Are you a student that does not need a reallife job to earn a living and hence can spend an unlimited amount of time in your free time on hacking? If so I am looking forward to your future contributions in GNOME to help out, but if you don't plan to I prefer to not see further ignorant statements that ignore the reality out there and just demotivate existing developers.

(In reply to comment #51)
> I would love to see a code of conduct for developers too, where developers
> should adhere to strict time lines when resolving bugs.

There is a code of conduct for GNOME Bugzilla: http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct. Demanding bugfixes is not very respectful. Further, demanding bugfixes is a bit pointless if you're not the manager of that person (requesting would be the normal thing). As Andre said, manpower is not unlimited.

Comparing GNOME to Microsoft or KDE is NOT AT ALL appreciated on GNOME Bugzilla (a developer bugtracker). It is *completely* offtopic. The purpose is to discuss how a particular bug can be fixed. Simply stated: if your comment is not specific to the bugreport (could've been made on another bugreport as well), then do not add the comment.

Please refrain from adding such comments to bugreports on GNOME Bugzilla. Especially comment 49; it is a glass half empty comment, on a site meant for developers where your contributions are in my regard 'questionable'.

If you want to discuss this further: bugmaster@gnome.org. Not on GNOME Bugzilla.

It seems that on Ubuntu this bug is still here (ubuntu lucid uses gnome 2.30). A problem related to applet location has been fixed in gnome 2.29.92 (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-panel/2.29/gnome-panel-2.29.92.news) but does it really fix the randomised position of applets as explained in this bug report?

I was really hopeful that I wouldn't be fighting this bug in 2.30, but unfortunately I can confirm the previous post. I have a brand new clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 with Gnome 2.30 and right-aligned panel applets that I didn't even touch are still moving around when the screen resolution changes. Nevertheless that old workaround of setting applet position and right-stick properties manually in gconf-editor still helps.

I'm using gnome 2.30.2 and i still have this issue.

I still have this issue on Fedora 13 (gnome-panel-2.30.0-4.fc13).

Please re-open this bug.  It still occurs in Ubuntu 10.04 with gnome-panel 2.30.2

it still occurs in ubuntu 10.10 with gnome 2.32.0

I meant 2.30.2
it also occurs in debian squeeze (testing) with 2.30.2

has it really been fixed or do debian, fedora and ubuntu just not apply the fix?

Confirmed here with Ubuntu 10.10.
I have a custom xrandr and 

lukey@LukeyPC:~$ cat /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45custom_xrandr 
xrandr --output CRT1 --mode 1680x1050 --output LVDS --mode 1440x900 --left-of CRT1 --rotate left

I have added the same line to GNOME System->Preferences->Startup Applications also.

Upon login, the screen resolution will change and the panel will appear a few seconds later, but still with the applets mixed up.

I do not agree with RESOLVED FIXED status for this bug :\

Reopening...

After many long years I finally convinced Vincent to remove the ability to manually position panel applets.  Now all applets are either left centre or right aligned, with no ability to move freely.

This is the definitive solution to this bug and it just landed on master as part of the last-minute gnome-panel party.

I think we can finally kill this one.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

My right-aligned icons that I never touch also keep moving around for no reason. I guess Gnome wouldn't be Gnome without this little longstanding hindrance.

But I'm glad that you guys did something.

(In reply to comment #0)
> From https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/44082
> 
> 
> "I have noticed for a while now that the above-mentioned phenomenon occurs when
> I, say, return from a shut-down. However, the strange thing is that it only
> happens on some occations. I don't really know what the problem is, so I can't,
> unfortunately, post more information."
> 
> "I can confirm this if you have a non-extended with non-locked applets.
> 
> Sometimes, those applets move strangely. I solved this by locking all the
> applets.
> 
> I reproduce this by disabling the lock, making the panel "extend" itself,
> adding a new applet, disable the extend the reboot."


I think it happens when no modes are set for the screen in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I did a 

sudo aticonfig --resolution=0,1280x1024,1024x768,800x600

and now my xorg.conf has these set. I then did a reboot, rearranged the symbols in the panel, fixed them and now I can keep rebooting, they stay where they are supposed to stay.
Of course, if you don't have an ati graphics card it's a different command and your resolution may differ from mine. I suppose you could also edit the xorg.conf directly. Here's what changed for me:

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes    "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
EndSection