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Add to SafariWhen comparing Avant Window Navigator vs Cairo-Dock, the Slant community recommends Cairo-Dock for most people. In the question“What are the best app launchers for UNIX-like systems?” Cairo-Dock is ranked 14th while Avant Window Navigator is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose Cairo-Dock is:
Drag and drop, change icons, use effects, etc. It's fun to play with. It's not a basic dock program and the GUI is good.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Tons of plugins
AWN comes with a big selections of applets such as a CPU monitor or clock or trash bin. This means one can easily turn the docks functionality into that of a taskbar. There is even an app launcher applet that will group all of ones apps in one place just like a start menu.
Pro Easily customized
There is a wide array of setting available to theming and customizing the dock.
Pro Easy to tweak and make your own themes
Drag and drop, change icons, use effects, etc. It's fun to play with. It's not a basic dock program and the GUI is good.
Pro Cairo-Dock session
Users can choose to launch a stand alone Cairo-Dock session where the dock also serves as a taskbar where all apps are launchable such as in any other DE session. There is a composited version and one without.
Pro Popular and usually found and installed from a distros repo
Due to the popularity and how long Cairo-Dock has been around it is more often than not found in a distros repos, which is very convenient to get the app installed.
Pro Easily themed
Cairo-Dock has built in settings to install and use themes for the dock and icons. Definitely more robust in this are than most other docks available for Linux.
Cons
Con Project is dead
Has not been update since 2013 and has been already pulled from many repos. While it still can be installed and works as it did in 2013, no more fixes or features are expected.
Con No updates since 2016
Certainly no PPAs for modern releases of Ubuntu.
Con Poor/No system theme or icon integration
Docks use their own theme, own theme colors, icons, layout's and theme engines.
Con Hard/Underwhelming to configure
Cairo dock proposes a feature rich tool, tweakable to any degree. The configuration menus are at times inappropriate, shallow and uninteresting, complex to navigate, and prefab-centric. Rarely offering a satisfying preset, and always unsatisfying to tweak.
Con Can be heavy on resources for weaker systems
Cairo-Dock is more on the heavy side when compared to other docks, which is something to keep in mind for those that are on low resource systems.
