Many of you, if you come from MacOS, will miss the famous Dock tool. This tool is very useful for many users and has led many developers to create similar tools for other operating systems. In Gnu / Linux we have many types of docks, but only one shines for its lightness and simplicity, this dock is called Plank.
Plank is a dock that can be installed on almost any Gnu / Linux distribution and that makes it easier for us to use a dock on the desktop. Quite useful if we use desktops like MATE, Cinnamon, KDE or Xfce. In the case of Gnome, although many users use it, it doesn't seem to make much sense with the dock extensions that Gnome Shell has.
How to install Plank on our Linux
Plank is based on the old dock called the docky. This has allowed that this dock is currently in many distributions, especially those that are based on Debian and Ubuntu. This means that through our distribution tool to install software we can install it. Another alternative is to install this dock by package. For this we get Plank's package and one downloaded, we execute the following lines in the terminal:
cd plank/ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr make sudo make install
With this we will install Plank, now good How do we configure it?
To configure this dock in our distribution, we must first execute it, once executed, the bar will appear. To customize the dock with our applications, we just have to take the application from the menu to the bar. Another option is to run the application and when it appears on the dock, right-click on it and check the option »keep in dock». Plank also allows create app folders, for this we only have to carry the application over another application that is in the dock. Plank will automatically create the applications folder.
Plank also allows us to further customize it with the themes for your dock. The installation of these themes is very easy because we just have to unzip the theme in the following folder from our Home, .local / share / plank / themes. After unzipping the package, we restart the computer and that's it.
Possibly when you restart the computer you have seen that you had to rerun Plank for it to be active. This is fixed adding Plank to the list of applications and services that load at system startup. And with these steps you can have a nice dock on your Linux, a fully functional dock that will help you to be more productive in front of the computer.
For me, Plank throws a conflict with Ubuntu 16.04.2 unity, when I go to shut down the system and click it, it takes me out of the session, resolved with delaying the execution of Plank {sh -c "sleep 15 && plank"}. "Eye: without the keys." If this has not happened to you, do that configuration first, if it already happened, delete the .config folder to solve {rm -R .config}, reboot and reconfigure.
NOTE: when deleting you could lose the configuration of programs such as transmisssion, if you do not want this, you would have to do it manually by going to the folder and backing up those of your favorite programs, then deleting and re-inserting the backed up folders
After a lot of years using macOS and for a relatively short time a Linux user, this has come to my mind. Installed and working.
pd delete the .config folder is not something excessive? maybe locating inside the related files, right? (be careful… I am a novice Linux user).
Interesting, but I don't see it very different from Docky, what's more, it's almost the same. Actually, for those who recommend it and have tried both of them, I would like to know what advantages it has over Docky. Thank you.
Plank is still the new name for Docky.