When comparing Cairo-Dock vs DockbarX, the Slant community recommends DockbarX for most people. In the question“What are the best app launchers for UNIX-like systems?” DockbarX is ranked 10th while Cairo-Dock is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose DockbarX is:
DockbarX has inbuilt settings that allow the user to easily customize the look of the dock, from changing the text color to the background color.
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Pros
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.
Pro Easily customized
DockbarX has inbuilt settings that allow the user to easily customize the look of the dock, from changing the text color to the background color.
Pro Great plugin to help blend in to XFCE4 panel
DockbarX has an available plugin called "DockBarX Xfce4 Panel plugin" that allows DockbarX to blend in seamlessly with the XFCE4 panel, which is great for XFCE users due to the limited options of the default panel.
Pro Easily the best Win 7 taskbar functionality
If you want a combined launcher/manager, a la Win 7, this is it.
Cons
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.
Con Not actively updated
Less than a dozen updates since 2014: https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx/commits/master
