How To Add Eye Candy To Ubuntu With Avant Window Navigator

A few days ago I visited a store selling Apple products at Lima (for those who may ask: It is not a real Apple store, sadly). I really like Apple, I own an iPod classic, recently got a pink Nano for Yesenia and am thinking about upgrading to a Touch soon.

At the store real everyday people, you know, the ungeek kind, stared at the MacBooks amid wows and fascinated looks and I guess mostly due to the nice effects Leopard offers. I am pretty sure many of these curious would-be-Apple-customers couldn't care less about the Core 2 Duo processor, video resolution and the polycarbonate shell (which it's quite nice) that MacBooks have.

Well, if eye candy is what most users are looking for these days let's give them a little with Ubuntu, without having to spend a grand in a new MacBook or, which is worst, having to install Vista. Let's focus in what impresses most users meeting a Mac: the Dock.

Install Avant Window Navigator on Ubuntu

Avant Window Navigator is a dock-like navigation bar for Linux. It replaces your typical panels, contains launchers for your applications, tracks open windows and supports a few nice plugins that will make your desktop look cooler because, let's face it, a few of us, Linux dudes, want a desktop as cool as the one Mac guys have.

I ran my tests on a laptop and a desktop, both of them running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) 64 bits. As far as I know there are no different versions for 32 and 64 bits so these instructions should work for both architectures.

The short version: Just run
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator

The problem with this approach is that Hardy doesn't include the awn-extras (applets) package, and this is where most of the fun it's, hence I recommend taking a few more steps.

If this is all you want then jump to finishing touches below, if not, then keep reading.

The long version: The smart AWN developers have a few repositories with everything you need to get the whole dock experience on Edgy, Feisty, Gutsy and Hardy.

1. Start by visiting the archive, choosing your Ubuntu version and copying the right entries.
2. Open your sources.list file:

   sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3. Add the entries (I'm using the ones for Hardy), I suggest a comment as well, save and close:

   # awn
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main

4. Update your list of packages:

   sudo apt-get update

5. Install the following packages:

   sudo apt-get install libawn0-trunk
sudo apt-get install libawn-dev-trunk
sudo apt-get install awn-manager-trunk
sudo apt-get install awn-extras-applets-trunk
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk

Finishing touches

Now you need to enable your new dock, you'll find the launcher, labeled Avant Window Navigator, under Accesories in Ubuntu's main menu.

1. Right-click on an empty spot of the dock (it can be a little tricky, try a few different places on the sides) and choose Preferences to tweak the look and behavior as you need it and activate a few plugins.
2. Drag some application launchers from Ubuntu's menu and drop them on the dock.
3. Now disable the gnome panels by going to Sessions > Current Session and removing gnome-panel from the list of running applications. Finally click on Apply.
4. To confirm everything works as expected press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace and login back.

Avant Window Navigator is a really funny application, it enhances your experience in the Linux desktop and isn't hard to install. Now I have more real state on my screen, enjoy the way my pidgin buddies jump and can hear a few wows from my visitors at home without having to get a Mac (even if I'll get one sometime just for the fun of it).