Docks are Old.

[AndrewN42]

I actually find myself to be happy when using Docky in place of Unity's sidebar. I like to maximize my screenspace so I auto-hide docky as I do with Windows' task bar. I never liked how stock GNOME 2 had two task bars. Unity's lens is nice for me as I normally just hit Super and then type the name of the application I want to launch something anyway.

[montag dp]

Am I the only one who thinks they look awesome and thats it? They are very ineficient, I don't know why we are moving away from good old efficient stuff such as the Windows XP or Cinnamons taskbar. Actually I do know; for most users EyeCandy > Usefulness.

I use Cairo dock and find it to be more useful than a regular task bar when there are a lot of windows open. It's quicker for me to find the window I want.

[3rdalbum]

Risc-OS had a dock years before the Mac OS.

I never liked docks, but I'm quite happy with the Unity launcher.

[monkeybrain2012]

Well any dock is better than having icons all over the desktop like in Windows XP.

[lykwydchykyn]

Is anyone else starting to think that docks (Docky, AWN, Cairo-dock etc) are become...tiring? OS X has one, Windows (sort of) has one, Unity (technically) has one as does Gnome and Xfce (by default).

They look awesome and they are really useful...but I am getting tired of looking at the same sort of thing all the time. Does anyone else share this opinion?

Eventually, many of us get to a point where we realize that having a desktop that looks cool or works great for the average user is not nearly as compelling as having a desktop that is optimally efficient for what we personally do with it. That's the point where you dump Unity, GNOME, KDE, etc and switch to something like openbox, awesome, or Xmonad and hack it into something that is completely frictionless to you but incomprehensible to anyone else.

[craig10x]

Well any dock is better than having icons all over the desktop like in Windows XP.

Couldn't agree more...It so much "neater" in the unity dock bar as compared to shortcuts all over the desktop on windows...

[Virtuality314]

Eventually, many of us get to a point where we realize that having a desktop that looks cool or works great for the average user is not nearly as compelling as having a desktop that is optimally efficient for what we personally do with it. That's the point where you dump Unity, GNOME, KDE, etc and switch to something like openbox, awesome, or Xmonad and hack it into something that is completely frictionless to you but incomprehensible to anyone else.

That's something that's happened to me very recently. I used to be a big fan of Gnome, and now I use Openbox, I find everything else difficult.

I've also found this which seems like a nice, minimalistic way to launch your apps.

[odiseo77]

I'm not a big fan of docks, but I understand they might be useful on desktops like Gnome3 and Unity. Anyway, as for me, I'm happy with KDE and its classical panel with a taskbar and launchers for applications.

[buzzingrobot]

Am I the only one who thinks they look awesome and thats it? They are very ineficient, I don't know why we are moving away from good old efficient stuff such as the Windows XP or Cinnamons taskbar. Actually I do know; for most users EyeCandy > Usefulness.

Exactly how are docks inefficient? Why is a stack of icons called a "dock" less efficient that a stack of icons called a "panel"?

For me, "eyecandy" is visual decoration that serves no other purpose. Panels and docks don't fall into the category. Wobbly windows, rotating cubes, etc., do.

As for efficiency, how do you determine what's efficient? I think it's a rather pointless attribute to measure for most users. The kind of thing that users who jail themselves inside tiled window managers running vim glory in.

[lykwydchykyn]

As for efficiency, how do you determine what's efficient?

It's a fairly objective thing. If it takes less time and uses less computing resources, it's more efficient. Is there another definition out there we can be subjective about?