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First Steps

A new feature with Cairo-Dock 2 : OpenGL support

With Cairo-Dock 2.0 version, you can choose between using Cairo-Dock with or without OpenGL.
With OpenGL, the use of your video card is maximized and the dock with many effects and plug-ins is fluid all the time even with a CPU under heavy load!
Unfortunately all ATI and many Intel cards don't support the OpenGL v2 as well as Nvidia cards (it seems to be resolved for Intel cards on Ubuntu Karmic / Fedora 12). For the owner of ATI or Intel video card, for which DRI2 support is under development, as well as for the legacy video card which do no support OpenGL v2, the Cairo back-end is still available. This allow everybody to be able to enjoy most of the dock's improvements and the new applets. But, this drivers are improving every day and we hope that you can use Cairo-Dock with OpenGL with every graphics cards!
Note that with the "same" config of AWN and Cairo-Dock without OpenGL, Cairo-Dock use less CPU than AWN.



To don't have a message at startup you have to force the mode that you want.

Cairo-Dock WITH OpenGL, add the parameter "-o" :
cairo-dock -o


Cairo-Dock WITHOUT OpenGL (with Cairo backend), add the parameter "-c" :
cairo-dock -c









First Launch

There are some possibilities to launch Cairo-Dock. A launcher is created in System Tools. For example with Gnome :
  • Go to Applications / System Tools / Cairo-Dock or GlxDock (Cairo-Dock with OpenGL)
  • Or Press Alt + F2 and type cairo-dock in the box that opened then validate.
  • You can also do it from a terminal:
    cairo-dock &
For ATI cards owners you have to force Cairo-Dock to don't use OpenGL :
cairo-dock -c








Launch Cairo-Dock at startup WITHOUT any additional message

To don't have a message at startup to choose which mode you will use, launch Cairo-Dock with one of these two commands :


Cairo-Dock with OpenGL
cairo-dock-o


Cairo-Dock with Cairo back-end
cairo-dock-c



For Gnome
Menu : System> Preferences> Sessions> Select the tab "Startup Programs> Add
Enter the commands for the program: cairo-dock -o (with OpenGL) or cairo-dock -c (without OpenGL)

For KDE
KDE Configuration Center> KDE Components> Add
Enter the commands for the program: cairo-dock -o (with OpenGL) or cairo-dock -c (without OpenGL)

For XFCE
Menu :
Parameters> Applications started Automatically> Add++
Enter the commands for the program: cairo-dock -o (with OpenGL) or cairo-dock -c (without OpenGL)







Customization

If you have any problems (normally ) you can see how to customize easily your favorite dock in the next section : Customization.







Recurrent problems
A black background? Problem with (S)Mplayer or VirtualBox?
See this section : Recurrent problems


Problem when Cairo-Dock is launched automatically ?

If you have some bug when Cairo-Dock is launched automatically at startup and not when it's launched manually : Try to launch it with a delay.

In your session manager (help here), use this command :
sh -c "sleep 15 && cairo-dock -o"

Change any parameters according to your configuration (here we have 15 seconds and Cairo-Dock with OpenGL)







Cairo-Dock works on Linux
Several research on the web shows that some people have been able to use the dock on a few Linux distributions:
  • Ubuntu/Debian (Cairo-Dock is developed on that distribution)
  • Fedora
  • ArchLinux
  • Mandriva
  • Gentoo
  • Frugalware
  • OpenSuSe

As well as a few windows manager:
  • Gnome (of course with Gnome-integration plug-in)
  • Xfce (of course with xfce-integration plug-in)
  • KDE


So if you have any problem (except these recurrent problems)please report your bug on our forum. Also if you have some ideas, propositions, new applets, etc. !


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Dock based on CSS Dock Menu (Ndesign) with jQuery. Icons by zgegball
Cairo-Dock is a free software under GNU-GPL3 licence. First stable version created by Fabounet.
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