Cairo-Dock
Cairo-Dock is a highly customizable dock written in C.
Contents
Installation
Install cairo-dock from the official repositories. The core package provides only the strict minimum to run Cairo-Dock - to use applets, animations, views, effects and dialogs you will also need cairo-dock-plug-ins.
You can also try the development branch with cairo-dock-gitAUR and cairo-dock-plug-ins-gitAUR.
Plugin dependencies
The applets in cairo-dock-plug-ins require quite a lot of dependencies, therefore all of them have been made optional not to bloat your system if you do not use a particular applet. Please refer to the optdepends list and install those you need.
Configuration
Running the dock
Run the dock in the background:
$ cairo-dock &
This will generate a startup message that will ask you to choose a backend for the current session (OpenGL or Cairo). There is an option to remember the choice and if not choosing to remember the choice, a startup message will be generated each time Cairo-Dock is run without backend options. To supress the startup message, you can specify which backend to use when running Cairo-Dock by specifying it as an option.
Run the dock with OpenGL backend:
$ cairo-dock -o &
Run the dock with Cairo backend:
$ cairo-dock -c &
Running the dock at startup
This depends on which desktop environment or window manager that is being used and which backend Cairo-Dock should be run with. The following section shows how to run Cairo-Dock at startup without forcing a backend.
Cairo-Dock method
Run Cairo-Dock and right-click the dock and go to Cairo-Dock > Launch Cairo-Dock on startup. The settings will be stored in ~/.config/autostart/
and sourced the next time you login.
Openbox/Fluxbox
Add the following to ~/.config/openbox/autostart
or ~/.fluxbox/startup
accordingly:
cairo-dock &
Xfce
If you have xfce4-autostart-editor
installed, simply run it and add an entry for Cairo-Dock. If you are not using a session manager you can add the following to ~/.config/xfce4/xinitrc
or ~/Desktop/Autostart
:
cairo-dock &
GNOME
Add a Cairo-Dock entry to Startup Programs using
$ gnome-session-properties
Configuring the dock
To configure the dock, right-click the dock and go to Cairo-Dock > Configure.
Troubleshooting
Two Cairo-Docks are running
This is most likely a result of saved sessions being runned at login. If you are using a desktop environment like GNOME, KDE or Xfce you need to disable automatic startup of sessions in your session manager settings. You may also need to delete the sessions cache:
$ rm ~/.cache/sessions/x*
If you are not using a desktop environment with a session manager or choose to have Cairo-Dock startup by itself, you need to remove autostart files generated by Cairo-Dock:
$ rm ~/.config/autostart/cairo-dock*
The background is black
This is most likely caused by not running a composite manager, like Xcompmgr or Cairo Compmgr. Cairo-Dock uses the transparency feature of the composite manager to display the dock, and without it the dock will be displayed with a black background. If you are using a desktop environment, simply enable the composite manager or desktop effects in the settings.
An alternative solution that does not require a composite manager is to enable fake transparency in Cairo-Dock. To do this, right-click the dock and go to Cairo-Dock > Configure > Advanced Mode > System > Composition. Then enable both Emulate composition with fake transparency and Make the config panel transparent.