I’ve been looking for an OS X-like dock bar for Linux for many years. For a while, I used the launcher applet in gdesklets. It works without x-composite and pretty nice, but gdesklets can be a resource hog at times. Most of the gdesklets are written in Python if I’m not mistaking and Python, being an interpreted language, uses much more system resources than a native compiled application.
My next dock was AWN, or Avant Window Navigator. At one point, possibly the present, Google was involved with this project. Again, this is if I recall correctly. AWN is very nice, however, it only works if you are using the composite extension in X, as in Compiz/Beryl/Compiz Fusion. It’s very customizable and behaves much like the OS X dock.
There’s one part of the OS X dock that I really like that isn’t quite the same in these docks however. The fish-eye zoom of icons on the dock is a trademark of OS X. AWN and the launcher in gdesklets both have a zoom function but it’s just not the same.
I recently discovered that there is a great dock pretty much hidden away in a program called Gnome-Do. Gnome-Do itself is a cool search app for gnome. It’s somewhat like a KDE app I remember that lets you launch programs by hitting a keyboard shortcut and then typing the name of the app. I can’t remember the name of that app at the moment though. Gnome-Do does exactly that. One can type super(windows key) and the space bar to bring up Gnome-Do.
Of course, you will have to install it first though. After it is installed, simply run the application and go to the preferences for it. Change the appearance to “Docky”. Voila, the best dock you’ve ever had in Linux will appear. Play with it and you’ll soon see that this is very close to the OS X dock experience.