Dock in desktop

koko004

Hello, this is my first post in this forum, I just installed it on my Dell Chromebook last night, and I am very happy, everything works (audio, bluetooth, wifi, touchscreen, etc).

I love the system, light and fast, but there is one detail that does not convince me, I installed the GNOME version, since I love the dock for the icons, but I can't find a way for it to appear permanently on the desktop, not in the "window view", I don't know if it is possible, greetings.

WetGeek

koko004 I can't find a way for it to appear permanently on the desktop

As @Harvey mentioned, there are alternatives that might suit you better than GNOME. Depending on why you selected GNOME, and how attached you are to that DE, you might want to give Xfce or Budgie, or Plasma a try. They all provide multiple workspaces, but in a much more standard way. And I think you'd find fewer hoops to jump through, especially during major GNOME updates. And the Solus OS underlying each of these DEs is the same small, fast, and essentially trouble-free OS that's in the GNOME edition.

And if you really like the idea of a dock, there's one availabe that can be installed from the Software Center, and such a dock is readily made visible on the current workspace, and hidden when it's not needed. The Plank dock works great for Xfce and I've been told for Budgie as well, and the Latte dock is perfect for Plasma. They're both easy to use, and they can very much simplify your desktop(s).

alfisya

Hello koko! That is default behaviour in gnome desktop. Only when in "overview" that dock is visible. You can make dock(called dash by gnome folks) visible by installing extension. There is two ways to install extensions for gnome.

Via web browser
To install extesion via web browser you need two component : browser extension and connector in your computer. First install browser extension called GNOME Shell integration for firefox or chromium. Then install the connector called gnome-browser-connector via Software Cente or terminal :
```
sudo eopkg it gnome-browser-connector
```
If both of them are already installed. Open https://extensions.gnome.org/ ,there you can search and install any extensions available.
Via dedicated applications
You can install Extension Manager from Flathub. To install any application from Flathub, you need to do that via terminal as Solus doesn't provide graphical application for that yet (It's in the works!). You can do that by following this guide. If those steps are already followed, then you type this in terminal :
```
flatpak install flathub com.mattjakeman.ExtensionManager
```
After installation finished, you can launch Extension Manager from your desktop. You can search, install, uninstall and customize your extensions.

Now after all that, the extension you want is Dock from Dash or Dash to Dock. If you are wondering why all the hoops for doing something so simple, well that is my question too. Cheers!

Harvey

alfisya If you are wondering why all the hoops for doing something so simple, well that is my question too. Cheers!

It is my understanding that gnome has decided this will not be a built in feature. Hence hoops.

It is worth noting that gnome stack upgrades frequently cause breakages when extensions are used; So make sure extensions stay up to date (Usually recommended to disable them when upgrading to a new major release) or use a DE that suits your UI design tastes better.

I think plank which is in the repository might be an alternative to all this, but a more experienced gnome user would have to chime in if this is a valid recommendation.

murbert

You chose the one version of Solus that makes it hard to do the one thing you want. Any other version will get the result you want easier, and more reliably.

riffer

Dash to Dock extension

One annoyance on wayland is that occasionally the dock will overlay the application. If that happens just right click on a clear space on the dock and go into Dash to Dock settings. Change position on the screen to right then change back to bottom. There is a fork called Dash to Dock for Cosmic that seems to have solved this bug but it isn't available for gnome 45 yet.

There is a Dash to panel extension that is also pretty cool as well.

see below from my desktop. Note: This extension removes the dash from the overview. Im not sure if there is a setting to prevent this.

riffer

koko004

Thank you all for helping me. I have followed @alfisya's instructions and by installing the first Gnome extension I already have the dock where I wanted. Even with a little research I was able to enable thumbnails for my camera's RAW files. I am very happy with the distribution.

Sebastian

You certainly can use plank with GNOME, and I already did in the beginning when I was used to plank from my Budgie days. But I quickly realized that while you can use it with GNOME, it doesn't make any sense since it makes the GNOME dash redundant. To circumvent this, there was a Dash to plank extension that somehow put the dash to plank. But I think that extension has not yet been ported to GNOME 45 and or has wayland issues.

So, the already mentioned other extensions like Dash to Dock probably are the best choice if you don't like GNOME's default behaviour.
Other possibilities are extensions like dashbar that put the app Icons in the top bar. But at that point one is better off to ditch GNOME and use Budgie instead.

Sebastian

Another thing that I should mention is an extension called hot edge. That's what I am using. While it leaves the dash in the overview, it opens/close overview by moving the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen, analog to the hot corner in the left top corner of the screen. Like this you can simply open the overview mode by moving cursor to the screen bottom, which is handy cause like this cursor is where the dash is when you open overview.
And if you are new to GNOME, you certainly should try the blur my shell extension for some eye candy.