Cairo-Dock is a simple but effective feature rich dock for your openSUSE Linux. Ever since, Fabounet proposed a version improved, with a very ergonomic configuration newer versions are followed at an intensive pace and with their new functionalities like the sub-docks, the effects on the launchers … Many people were grafted with the project, each one bringing its competences, of graphics, to the applet or plugins and development.

Cairo-Dock comes with different themes to choose from and addon plugins and applets can be installed and added at a later time.

Packman Repositories for openSUSE has a 1-click install for Cairo-Dock supported for openSUSE 11.0, openSUSE 10.3 and openSUSE 10.2.

To install this install to automatically download the YMP file and start with the YaST package manager. Click Next on the welcome screen for the installation.

[NOTE: Click here to enable 1-click install in openSUSE 10.2]

Click Next to proceed to download the packman repositories (if not already added) and the relevant packages and its dependencies and install. Once installed, click Finish to complete the installation.

To start Cairo-rock,

opensuse11:~ # cairo-dock &

This should start for the first time and prompt you to choose from a set of pre-installed themes.

Once the theme selected, this should launch the Dock at the bottom of the screen.

To configure the dock, right-click on it, click “Cairo-Dock” and click Configure. Here you can set various attributes and most impotantly, select and add applets and plugins for your dock.

To change the selected theme, right-click the dock, click Cairo-Dock – Manage Themes. This will bring up the theme selection window, Choose from the list as earlier.

There are a few addons/plugins/applets that can be installed from the Packman repository which got added when you installed the Cairo-dock. To install these addons, click Computer – Yast, Search for cairo-dock. This should bring up all cairo-dock packages for your openSUSE.

For more, click here for the author’s website.