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When comparing Cairo-Dock vs Rofi, the Slant community recommends Rofi for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux app launchers?” Rofi is ranked 1st while Cairo-Dock is ranked 16th.
Specs
Question Ranking
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 Customisable
Pro Can run commands
e.g.:
<code>run: st toxic</code> Runs a tox client in the terminal emulator "st".
<code>run: maim ~/Images/screenshots</code> take a screenshot with "maim" and save it to given location.
Pro Simple
Pro Minimalist design, yet can use customizable themes
Also it's easy to make use of your own "plugin" (scripts).
Pro Case insensitive
Instead of having to worry about case sensitive characters, you can use caps or lowercase wherever you please without causing any issues.
Pro Great keybindings
They seem to be emacs based.
Pro Clipboard history extension
Greenclip adds clipboard manager functionality.
Pro Greatly maintained
Pro Resource efficient
Pro Easily switch windows without mouse
Cons
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 One of the most poorly documented launchers for new users
Challenge: Install Rofi and google how to actually start or use it. I'll wait. Sure, there's plenty of Arch bros screaming about dmenu, showing off editing of config files, integrating it with i3 or this or that...
uh... guys? how. do. we. actually: 1) start the damn thing. 2) use the damn thing.
I was intrigued because Rofi was ranked #1 on slant, which hasn't done me wrong so far with reviews. But I'm about to go back to using a third party dock in Xfce, because there's simply no resource on how to use Rofi for a complete newbie.
Con Issues when Caps Lock is active
When typing with Caps Lock activated, it's impossible to use Backspace. Rofi eventually freezes in this scenario.
Con Zero images
This is a pro for some but it's a con for others.
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