Comment by troad

> Not something I've ever seen (or noticed, at least) or used.

It's all the icons next to the clock, placed there by applications that run in the background but need occasional interactivity.

It's the thing at the bottom right of every Windows since Windows 95, and the top right of every Mac since Mac OS X. KDE has always had it in the Windows position. Gnome had it in the Mac position from Gnome 2 (2002) until recently (Gnome 4?).

Something that every desktop OS considers important enough to show, except Gnome, which insists your computer is a bad iPad for some reason.