There are few ways to get Mac OS X styled docks in Linux. If we like them better, that is.

One way to do so is using the Cairo-dock application. Good thing about it is you don’t have to have compiz or any other render manager pre-installed (which is awesome, considering the fact that such managers of effects can really cause you headache if you’re running nVidia graphic card).

All commands below are for xUbuntu / Debian systems.

You can install Cairo-dock by:

• using the repository: typing

$ sudo apt-get install cairo-dock
in your konsole should do the trick.

• using .deb package: after downloading it from http://developer.berlios.de/ double click on the package or open terminal and type:

$ cd /directory_2_deb/
$ sudo dpkg cairo-dock*.deb
$ sudo apt-get -f install

• compiling from source: you need to download the .bz2 source (developer.berlios.de) and write in terminal

$cd /directory_2_untared_file/
$ autoreconf -isvf
$ ./configure -prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install

Installing from .deb package or compiling from source would most probably ask you to install a bunch of additional packages and dependencies, that are listed in the CairoDock community site.

Once you’ve installed it you can start the docker by typing $ cairo-dock in terminal or from KDL launcher. Something similar should appear:


Themes and appearance can be managed through the Configure menu (right click on the docker). There are quite many options to chose from: position and styling of the panel, taskbar and icons effects, animation types, adding or editing desklets and many many more.


Adding applications to the docker is really simple – just drag and drop into the panel and voila. Removing ain’t much harder either – right click on the application icon in Cairo-dock and Kill or Remove this launcher, depending on the type of the app.

There might be some problems with OpenGL if you’re using it as Compositing type and if that is the case you can just launch the docker without OpenGL, which would solve the problem.