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When you first think of Apple, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the dock. If you are not an avid Apple user or just don't know what a dock is, it's the nifty looking application launcher at the bottom of every apple computer. It launches programs and keeps track of opened an minimized ones. The question is are there any great docks to use on the Linux operating system?

Window Navigator or most now call it AWN for short. AWN was created by Neil Patel and was The answer is yes, there is an amazing dock for Linux, and I it has lots of features that Apple doesn't yet. The dock is called Avant released to the public using Google Code in 2007. It was initially a simple little dock, to launch and track open tasks, now it is much much more. Although still very simple it has lots of great new features that I will get into, and they are what separates it from any other dock on any other operating system. What fuelsAWN's greatness is its devoted community and it being open source. It slowly grew out of Google code once, A forum was set up and then the project was moved to launchpad. Launchpad was a great move for AWN and its community. Along with the forum Launchpad allows many users to work on and create things for AWN all together. The speed of development is what is astonishing for AWN.

Now that you have a little background on the AWN project lets get to talking about the dock itself. First off AWN uses compositing to get the glass see through look so you will need either xcompmgr or Compiz Fusion to run it. But if you don't have either, do not worry a non-composite version is on the to-do list. Once running it is easy to add launchers to the dock by just dragging them and dropping them on the dock. When you click a launcher the program will open and an arrow (which can actually be changed to anything) will show up below showing it is now a task. When you minimize the program it will minimize down to its own icon. Tasks which are open which do not have launchers on the dock will have icons on the far right side of the dock, separated from the launchers with a nice icon.

AWN not only functions great as a dock, but looks amazing. AWN at the moment has 3 overall looks, which can all be themed with lots of different colors and or patters. The first and default look is a flat panel resembling the Apples' dock from Tiger. The next dock is a 3 dimensional looking dock molded after the dock found in Apple's Leopard. This dock looks more like a shelf with the icons

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