Compiz & The Notification Panel On XFCE

I stumbled upon a minor but irritating bug / quirk with Xubuntu Karmic 9.10 with Compiz and the panel / notification area over ruling each other. It comes down to which one loads first. I noticed that some applications like Audacious had their status icon active but invisible. You could click on where the icon should be and it'd act as if it was there, you just couldn't see it.

If you restart the xfce4-panel it fixes the issue and the panel and it's icons behave exactly as they should. This does not carry across when you reboot however, which meant unless a fix could be found it'd get real annoying real fast.

I did nip into the #ubuntu IRC channel for some help, a couple of people tried but it didn't help. To be fair I did nip in at a seemingly very quiet time in the channel, and they did try, rather than leave me hanging. They did suggest I try in #compiz as these things can happen if it's not configured just right. In the end I didn't get round to trying #compiz, but I did find a solution that works.

The key is the order the various parts load. The panel must start last, or at least after Compiz. Open the Sessions & Startup app from the Settings menu, and look at the  Session tab. I changed the priority of Compiz to 30, while the rest are at 40. When you reboot now, remember to have the "save session" box ticked.