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Accepted
William
Asked: 2011-11-29 19:18:52 +0800 CST

Is there any alternative to the Mac OS X dashboard?

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As the title states, does anyone know of a dashboard alternative for Ubuntu? This is useful feature in Mac OS X, middle-clicking on the mouse brings up a customizable page where you can put anything from weather and stock reports to games. Is there any equivilent for this in Ubuntu?

11.10

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The compiz widget layer + screenlets works like this. You can also install or Plasma if you want even more fancy stuff.

    You can enable the widget layer in CCSM. (More detail will be added to this answer when I have some more time).

    • Run: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager screenlets screenlets-pack-all
    • Open this and go the widget layer plugin:
    • Widget Layer options:
      Widget Layer
    • Run the screenlets app: alt+f2+screenlets
    • Set the screenlets options so that they show on the widget layer by default:
      screenlets
      (then)
      options
    • 4

  2. Cairo-Dock seems to be close to what you're asking for. You can install it simply by running the following: 

    sudo apt-get install cairo-dock

    Hope this helps!

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  3. I'm not quite sure what you have in mind, but Cairo Dock allows for bringing up customizable pages where you can put things like weather reports. So I'll second the previous recommendation of Cairo Dock.

    You can have a look at some screenshots demonstrating what you can do with Cairo Dock using the following link: http://glx-dock.org/mc_album.php?a=3

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  4. I think CONKY is the best dock around, it is officially supported and you can download it by running "sudo apt-get install conky" in the terminal.

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