I have an application called foo that runs as root. The foo calls system function to execute the other application which show tray icon using Qt. The Systray Icon Example in Qt is working properly in user account but not in root. I run the following command to drop privileges: system(“exec su -l user -c ‘export DISPLAY=:0; /opt/systray &’”); However, the systray icon doesn’t appear in Ubuntu 13.10 & 14.04. Is there any way to display this systray in this case except for the solution that uses a PPA that comes with to re-enable the systray whitelist?