So I've come across something that doesn't quite classify as a bug, because I'm forcing my system to do something untypical, but it inadvertently results in the System Tray reverting to the ugly, old X spec.

Under normal conditions, I.E. I don't screw with the order that things start in when logging into KDE, plasma-netbook uses the new DBus system tray spec. and hides my icons as I'd expect it to. However, I've put a script in ~/.kde/env that starts, "plasma-netbook --graphicssystem raster" before the splash-screen finishes (and before an awful lot of other stuff during KDE startup) and the system tray reverts back to the old spec.

Does anybody have any idea why this happens? What starts before plasma-netbook under usual circumstances that makes plasma-netbook obey the new system tray spec?

Scripts in ~/.kde/env are sourced before most of the KDE startup procedure ( not even KSMServer is running ).

Thus, you need to move it to ~/.kde/Autostart instead, which will resolve the issue, as kded4 will be running at that stage allowing the new system tray specification to function.