Good to know Cairo-Dock is developed on Ubuntu. So of course some wiki pages are slanted toward Ubuntu, and may be update arrive faster if you are also using Ubuntu.
But fear not! Cairo-Dock is being adopted by people who use other distros such as OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, Toutou/Puppy Linux, etc each with its own way of pushing the dock to you.
If your distro has some repository, please be patient as the maintainer needs some time to update them so delays are to be expected.
I just installed Cairo-Dock, How do I launch it? From a terminal type
This way you can see debug information (at least until you close the terminal).
Without a terminal Type ALT+F2, then enter "cairo-dock" and finally validate.
To launch it at every startup Add an entry in the session manager to launch cairo-dock
- For Gnome : System / Preference / Sessions / Startup Programs select Add.
In Command, enter cairo-dock
You can also use the script launch-cairo-dock-after-beryl.sh if needed (see below).
I just selected a theme and now I can't find the dock ! Most likely this theme is using the auto-hide function. Move your mouse to one of the edge of your desktop and it shoudl appear.
It can also be that the dock is hidden by the application of your Window Manager. Try to move it somewhere and you should see the dock again .
I have an ugly black border all around the dock ! This means that your window manager doesn't support transparency (composite). If you can't/don't want to install a window manager that supports it such as Compiz or Beryl, then look at this page :Composite Manager
The dock will only appear on one desktop when the dock loads before the window manager the dock will only appear on the first desktopn (This will happend with Beryl). Quite annoying, isn't it?
To solve that issue you have to make sure that cairo-dock will load after the WM. With the dock a little script is provided (/usr/bin/launch-cairo-dock-after-beryl.sh) to help you achieve this.
Use that script instead of just cairo-dock to launch the dock at startup (see above how to do it!). By default the waiting time in the script is 12 secondes (sleep 12). If you need more or less just edit the script.
Sometime sub-dcoks are hidden by other windows This behaviour is WM dependant. The sub-docks havee a "menu" type( or it can be "dock" for application sub-docks).
- With Beryl deactivate the option to prevent focus stealing in General options.
- Compiz a similaer option and Metacity doesn't have that problem.
Even when I stick the dock to the edge of the screen there is always 1 pixel extra In Beryl, with the vertical view there is 1 pixel reserved on the edge of the screen, even when you have a value of 0 or negative in the edge distance option.
There is only 32 bits packages no 64 bits This is no longer strictly true. Some people are working on creating 64 bits package for various distro.
If you can find one for yours the ultimate solutions is to compile the dock yourself using either the SVN method or if you use Ubuntu this method For 64 bits processor.
How to get that wonderful 3D view I saw on the web? Cairo-Dock engine has a view system which allw you to radically modify the appearance of the dock. You can specify the view you want in the configuration panel (tab "cairo-dock" for the dock and "sub-docks" for the sub-docks). Each sub-docks can overwritet the mains etting by right clicking on the sub-dock itself.
View are provide by the applets called "rendering" so you have to activate it is if not already done. Go to the tab Applets in the configuration window and tick it
When I watch a video in full screen the dock stays in front Once again this is WM dependent. To fix it (if you don't have auto-hide already active), right click on the dock and select "quick-hide". This will activate auto-hide until you move the mouse above the recall zone. If you want to have an invisible recall zone just don't specify an background image.
My dock always disappear when I activate "auto-hide" ! When auto-hide is activated, the dock can appear to have disappeared. Actually it is most likely hidden behind the dashboard fo your WM. To fix it just use that command to launch the dock:
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