Ok, so you've got your nice, clean desktop running emerge, and you've taken a look around. It's time to rebuild, and if you'd like inspiration, take a look at my desktop to the left. This is only my current layout; I change things up fairly often. Please note, I take no credit for any of the images involved to the left, but I can't remember the authors involved. [Edit 20090727: The wallpaper is located at the DeviantArt page of the author, OfficerMike.] If you want options to customize things, though, the best place to hunt around is DeviantArt. First, let me remind you that this IS Windows Vista. And this isn't even the most impressive setup you'll see if you go looking. But it's a fairly decent one, and it's a good place to start for what we're talking about.
Take a good look. If you look really close, you can see my system tray in the upper right hand corner, and a clock and calendar in the lower right. Those are both emerge applets, customized just right - I like them there, but out of the way. A little experimentation will help you find the setup that's just right for you. As for the rest?
The two docks - that's right, two - are both created by the Plus version of ObjectDock. And that's what we'll be talking about this time; the dockbar.
The dock might not be the most efficient way to access ones programs, but it's definitely one of the coolest looking methods. The right skin, the right icons, and you've got something gorgeous. There are a number of different dockbars out there that are worth looking at, so it all depends on the features and so on that you're looking for.
The best one, in my opinion, is ObjectDock, either plus or free - but of course, the plus version will set you back a few bucks. If you feel like you want the features, IE, if having more than one dock on the screen at once sounds like a nice idea, or having tabbed docks. . . then it's worth it to you. I went for it because I like having all the options, bells, and whistles.
Other classically named good options with a good feature set include RocketDock and rklauncher, but on my system at least, both of these free docks use more system resources for fewer features (or in the case of rklauncher, features that wouldn't use); however, results vary, so if you're interested, try them all out. Another good looking dock that's coming out shortly is the new Nexus dock from the makers of WinStep; it's in free open beta right now, but it looks promising.
The setup I use has ObjectDock plus showing two docks, one zoomer at the bottom, and another one on the left. The left hand dock serves as my taskbar; it's completely transparent, and displays screenshots of minimized windows. Windows that haven't been minimized simply don't appear on the taskbar, though I could have set them to display. Again, it's all about what makes the most sense to you.
You SHOULD be able to do either of the two docks I have on screen with the free version of ObjectDock - just not both. So if you wanted to duplicate my setup for free you'd have to run two dock programs, and make sure that the program icons on both were synced up. However, this would consume more memory than having the one program to do both; believe me, I tried it.
I'll try and track down the links to the author pages for what I'm using above if it becomes important, but otherwise, once again, I take no credit for any of the basic elements; I just combined them.
Excelsior!
p.s. The one thing you're not seeing all of is my widgets; I'll explain that in a later post.
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