In openSUSE 11.4 / KDE 4.6.0, Task Manager will group several instances of Java applications using a common 'main' class name, which isn't very user friendly.

In my example, we install a desktop product using an InstallAnywhere installer. We have several Java applications for which we install /usr/share/applications/<app>.desktop entries. Each application uses a common "LaunchAnywhere" stub that has a common 'main' class (com.zerog.lax.LAX) and an application-specific configuration file (*.lax). When several of these applications are run, such that the Task Manager groups them, the group name shown is "com-zerog-lax-LAX".

Each application has a command line like the following:

testuser 19198 5131 14 12:18 ? 00:00:26 /opt/product/jre/bin/java -Xmx1073741824 -Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/./urandom com.zerog.lax.LAX /opt/product/application.lax /tmp/env.properties.19198

Task Manager appears to be extracting the 'main' class name and using it as the group name. Is there any way the group name can be controlled by a .desktop file property? I tried 'GenericName' without success, and don't see any other applicable properties in:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/deskto ... 01s05.html

Thanks in advance for any assistance,

-Keith

The Task Manager has no access to the *.desktop files used to launch the application. The fix for this needs to be done in the applications themselves, which need to set a Window class name that matches their application name.

What a great tip!

Sun VMs (Java 6) don't support setting the WM_CLASS group name, but there's a workaround described in:
http://elliotth.blogspot.com/2007/02/fi ... -java.html

The Sun RFE is:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bu ... id=6528430

Problem solved. Thanks much!