VMs pinned to Grouped Window List

[aPpYe]

Distribution

Debian 12 - Bookworm

Package version

5.6.8

Graphics hardware in use

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

Frequency

Always

Bug description

I recently upgraded to Debian 12 (Bookworm, latest stable) and am experiencing what I believe to be a regression related to VirtualBox and the Grouped window list in the panel ... Before the upgrade I was running Debian 11 (Bullseye), which has Cinnamon 4.8.6.

In Cinnamon 4.8.6 (and even the 3.x version before the grouped window list was included), I was able to create a shortcut to a virtual machine (using VirtualBox) that I would then pin to the panel. I can pin them to the panel in the new Cinnamon as well, but unlike with older versions, upon launching, this newer Cinnamon creates a new panel icon. It does not threat the pinned icon as an application, rather it treats it as a shortcut. Instead of being able to use the existing icon to minimize, activate and reactivate a running VM, similar to how the grouped window list acts with any regular app, I now have to interact with the new icon that is created upon launching the VM. I hope this makes sense?

I am pretty sure I have narrowed this down to Cinnamon itself. I have verified that this issue persists on a fresh install, so it is not related to leftover cruft and whatnot from the upgrade, and the version of Virtualbox is the same before and after the upgrade.

EDIT: Debian 11 is "BULLSEYE" ... not "Buster" ... I wish they didn't have three "Bs" in a row!

Steps to reproduce

Create a launcher in the menu with the following code:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=MyVirtualApp
Exec=VirtualBoxVM --startvm "MyVirtualApp"
Comment=
Terminal=false
Icon=/var/lib/app-info/icons/debian-bookworm-main/64x64/transmission-gtk_transmission.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network

Expected behavior

I expect the launcher that launched the VM to continue to be used as the panel button to interact with the VM window.

Additional information

This worked the way I expect it to work when I was on Debian 11 (Bullseye) and has for many iterations before that. I remember it worked this way, even before the Grouped Window List was included by default with Cinnamon, when it was ... Ice window manager (or something like that?)

This new behavior is consistent across a variety of hardware.

[aPpYe]

I have added a couple of screen recordings to illustrate the issue.

The first video was created with a fresh install of Debian 11 with all formatted partitions including /home. It illustrates the code for each VM launcher, and how they act as applications, where the launcher icon is also the icon that is used to interact with the running VM. I also launch the VM a second time, with a second launcher to illustrate a use case scenario where the VM is launched in seamless mode. A startup script launches an application (four-in-a-row) and then shuts down the VM when the application is exited. Understandably, it would be silly to create a VM to play a native version of connect four, but this technique works well for Windows applications as well, Photoshop, for example. The result is that the user sees the the application running "natively" on their screen.

The second video was created this time with a fresh install of Debian 12 with all formatted partitions including /home. It illustrates the undesirable behavior displayed with this newer version of Cinnamon. The same VM is launched using an identically configured launcher, and the undesirable behavior is that another panel icon is created on the panel to interact with the VM, confusing some of my users. The VirtualBox version remains identical throughout, though I did notice a minor bump in the version of QT reported in the about screen for VirtualBox.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if anything else may be needed.
Debian 11.webm
Debian 12.webm