You may have heard of Docky a new theme that transforms Gnome Do into a simple and fully functional MacOsX – like dock.
Where’s the catch ? If you’re like me Docky will be painfully slow on your computer, at the point of being unusable. After some search, turned out to be nvidia driver to suck. The good news here is the new version of the nvidia driver (already in the Ubuntu repositories) suck less and won’t get in the way of Docky performing its magic.
So here’s the steps:
- enable the proposed and backports repositories.
- update to the last kernel (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade should suffice)
- install the lastes nvidia driver: sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180 nvidia-180-modaliases
- reboot (yes, I hear your pain)
- open System->Administration->Hardware Drivers and check if the nvidia driver 180 shows up and it’s enabled. If it’s not enabled enable it and reboot (should be already enabled btw).
You’re all done. You can now enjoy Docky like the rest of us 
What ?
You didn’t know about Docky and don’t even have it listed under the available themes ? That’s because you’re not using Gnome Do PPA. Add these in your /etc/apt/sources.list, update,upgrade (or apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins if you don’t have it yet) and restart Gnome Do.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
Here’s what it looks like:
Docky – gnome-do from Pau Iranzo on Vimeo
That’s all folks !
Docky was ……….. alright for me. A bit jumpy if other things taking up CPU power but I followed your tip anyway. Worked like a charm… Thanks
You don’t need to change to the -180 drivers, you can use nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 and then restart docky for the same effect. It just happens that after -180 that behavior is set by default.
I knew, I just preferred the other way around.
[...] you have problems getting it to work you could take a look at this post by Stefano [...]
I didn’t knew about docky and I’m using gnome-do for a long time. It looks cool, but let’s see if I can get used to it
thank you!
I followed your instructions and after reboot I get black screen and can’t do anything. Please help. How to revert to old driver and settings in easiest way possible? (I’m not linux expert…)
@rat, I wrote you in mail. Btw, I believe the best thing to do is:
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-glx-180 nvidia-180-modaliases
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
then reboot.
tnx, it worked…after that i activated old 177 nvidia driver and then done nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 like Nick HS suggested. Now everything is back to normal and my docky works nicely
)
To be honest, just the launcher window is enough – after using Avant Window Navigator for a while, it gets annoying to have things take up space at top/bottom of the screen – best pop up a search window no? Use ALT F2 or Gnome-Do to launch or do anything and keep the screen big – nice conky at the side to show you everything and notifications on a panel visible at the side, juz hide the rest!
dock is old hat – why does everyone want a Mac?
@ben2talk: Docky as the advantage of keeping the list of open sw, under your eyes.
.
Now, I was used to manually launch awn when I needed it, preferring a total blank screen.
But I have to say Docky is so nice that i’m keeping it on by default.
Instead, I don’t like having conkie all the time up to cover my wallpaper, though
I dont know how to:
enable the proposed and backports repositories.
I probably have it already but i don’t know exaclty what you want me to do there or more exaclty how.
@Sergio: System->Administration->Software Sources, find the Update tab, and make sure proposed and backports are checked.
Hey thanks I got it working real fast, I know this isn’t what you’re explaining but the icons in Gnome Do are badly pixelated, the third party apps icons, because with Gnome-Colors there’s no problem but I use Google Earth, Netbeans, FrostWire, etc., and they’re pixelated even tho when you look for them in the classic Gnome Do they show nice and neat, but when you open the app the dock puts them ugly.
@Sergio: that’s probably because of the poor quality of the .desktop icons provided with the packages. I don’t experience your same problem, though, on my pc such icons suck in both themes of gnome-do
.
I had been looking for that, but I couldn’t find the .desktop icons to modify them, or anyway to make them look better for just the 4-5 apps I need.
@Sergio: I’ll post a tutorial tomorrow
TYVM.
Actually the kernel update plus the 180 modaliases update borked all of my sound. It removes the 173 and 177 drivers and is listed as a bug. I’m supposed to be using the intel8×0 module, but it cannot be properly installed under Intrepid at this moment.