Let me start by telling you about my potential bias: I have long wanted a good linux dock. AWN simply doesn’t cut it. It’s very buggy, crash prone, and the interface is just very odd to work with, from my personal experience. Cairo dock is another option, but it’s even buggier than AWN, not to mention the fact that the preferences window is the most insane “design”, if one could call it a design, I’ve ever seen.

After trying both of these options on numerous occasions, I reserved myself to just using the simple gnome-panel tasklist applet. It works, it lets me see what I have open, and it’s not extremely buggy.

That is, of course, until I was in the #ubuntu-offtopic channel the other day, and “overheard” Amaranth and DBO talking about a new dock.

I started reading my backlog, then once I was caught up I started talking to DBO. What he was describing was basically the perfect dock. The icon zoom worked and worked properly, it supported reading the windows correctly so there weren’t the bugs typically associated with docks, and, here’s the kicker, it integrates with one of my favorite productivity applications, GNOME Do. What’s more, it had intelligent window grouping and selection, to get you to the proper window quickly.

So I started talking to DBO, and he told me that I wouldn’t be able to run it in Hardy because it doesn’t support Mono 2.0. My heart was crushed.

However, a few days later, I was back in #gnome-do, and DBO told me that I might be able to run it in Hardy with a custom Mono. What followed was a bunch of testing, trying, and eventually building. After adding in a custom repo and installing extra mono packages, and replacing my /usr/lib/mono/2.0/gmcs.exe with a custom one, I was able to use it.

I quickly finished installing it and loaded it up, then began to use it. The first thing I noticed was that it integrated itself as gnome-do, not just added upon it. Now, when I summon do, it brings it up down as my dock, which only makes things sexier:

It also fully implements grouped windows (though, at first this was giving me issues, DBO soon resolved the issue, thanks =D). You can control the group, or individual ones. Clicking on the main icon for a group is also intelligent. If something demands attention, then it goes to that window, otherwise there are other rules to help ensure you get to the window you want.

It maintains all the old functionality:

While updating some of the plugins (for instance changing Twitter to Microblogging to add Identi.ca support):

And it also completely implements dual-monitors, for those of you who use them:

That’s not to say it’s without hitches. I’ve found that it doesn’t seem to like /usr/share/applications/lynx.desktop, because of (I can only assume) the Russian characters. I’ve deleted this file to get it to work.

Also, it doesn’t yet have support for workspaces. The icons you see are the icons from all your workspaces. I keep prodding DBO about that, hopefully he’ll get around to it.

I have some issues with it at work, the performance is really bad, but that’s not saying much because I’m running an 8600GT which seems to have been affected by the powermizer bug.

Lastly, since I’m using 4 monitors, with 2 screens, the “Switch monitors” button gets a little confused, trying to flip to the third monitor in my first screen, which doesn’t exist. As far as I know, DBO is currently working on this, or will be in the near future.

Here are some notes for those of you who want to try it out:

If you want to run it, in Hardy at least, you’ll need a custom mono. First, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

# custom mono
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/directhex/ubuntu hardy main

Then update your repository cache:

sudo apt-get update

And finally install your custom mono 2.0:

sudo aptitude install mono-2.0-service mono-2.0-devel monodevelop

These are the commands that worked for me.

When I first ran it, I needed ot put in my own gmcs.exe, but with some updates by RAOF, it now automatically does that for you, so you don’t need to worry about doing it.

Once you’re done, check out gnome-do and do-plugins by cd’ing to a working directory and executing the following 2 commands:

bzr branch lp:do
bzr branch lp:do-plugins

Once done, go into each and install them:

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

Once you’re done, go and delete ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins* to remove your old plugins and configuration, if you already have gnome-do.

Finally, run gnome-do, then go to the Appearence tab and change the theme to docky. Voila! You have the greatest dock and productivity bar ever!

Thanks for all the help djsiegel, RAOF, DBO, and everybody else who helped!

Short video of me using it: