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Add to SafariWhen comparing Cairo-Dock vs Ulauncher, the Slant community recommends Ulauncher for most people. In the question“What are the best app launchers for UNIX-like systems?” Ulauncher is ranked 3rd while Cairo-Dock is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Ulauncher is:
Ulauncher comes with very reasonable defaults, looks good and just works.
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 Simple
Ulauncher comes with very reasonable defaults, looks good and just works.
Pro Fast
Pro Allows custom shortcuts
Pro Themeable
ULauncher supports themes and comes with a good supply on install but more can also be made.
Pro Supports fuzzy search
You can enter app name with a typo and Ulauncher will still be able to find it.
Pro Supports extensions in Python
With Ulauncher you can easily add and update third party extensions. From kill process to windows switching, many of them work very well. The extension API is documented and if you know Python you can create and share your own extensions.
Pro Actively maintained
Unlike Albert or others, it is actually being maintained.
Pro Good extension ecosystem
Pro Good look
Ulauncher looks modern & can be customized with many themes.
Pro Direct plugin install from GitHub
Can fork, customize, and install instantly.
Pro Extensions are really easy to write by yourself
Pro Quick search
Pro Able to launch Kdialog, Zenity and Bash scripts
Extensions are easily created. Python script is all open to see. Not compiled like some.
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 Extensions store is confusing, lots of redundant extensions.
There are dozens of extensions, which is good, but as an average user it is hard to find what you are looking for. It is unclear to me how updating plugins work.
Con Needs more posibilities for extensions
Currently, extensions can run only when you type their alias and <space>. There is no way to see results from multiple extensions at once. The output is also limited just to rows.
Con Does not easily fit into a customized desktop without full GTK3 CSD support
