What is the best dock to use with MX?

[anticapitalista]

...
(and note i mainly use windows as a point of reference as its still the leading desktop OS so thats the OS most new potential users of MX linux are coming from)...

I don't think this is true. My guess is that most new users of MX Linux are already linux users.

[Artim]

I don't see much difference between a dock and a good ol' Xfce panel with launchers on it. I just make that panel transparent and just put launchers for my favorite apps in it. Why would a dock be better?

[kevin 6969]

Alright roads

[manyroads]

I don't see much difference between a dock and a good ol' Xfce panel with launchers on it. I just make that panel transparent and just put launchers for my favorite apps in it. Why would a dock be better?

If what you want is a decent, usable, low resource tool and are willing to accept a lower amount of eye-candy, xfce-panel is simply 'magnifique'.

[davemx]

I use a second XFCE panel. The fact that you can add a drop down menu to Launcher, gives it an immediate practical advantage. I have the original panel at the bottom, and the extra one set to Autohide.

In the unlikely event that I ever wanted to revert to mainly using Windows, I'd want it to be up to date enough to run the latest applications, whilst looking simple and practical like Win98 or WinXP. Must be old age!

[Artim]

If what you want is a decent, usable, low resource tool and are willing to accept a lower amount of eye-candy, xfce-panel is simply 'magnifique'.

In other words, the only difference is eye candy? Pft. I'm fine with just my panel then. I'm not into eye candy much. And if I ever wanna get fancy, I'll just use fancy icons!

[Sparky]

If the cairo dock wasn't as buggy as it is, I think it would be the best. It looks amazing.

[jj1j1]

I tried all of the docks in the MX Package installer. Cairo is way more than I want from a dock. Docky,and plank has a weird artifact that seems like a window setting is wrong because its the same on both docks.

I ended up using xfce panel because it just works.

[seaken64]

I've often wondered why some distros use "Docks". I always thought it was to be more Mac-like. But I really don't know. Coming from DOS and Windows I tend to gravitate toward the "Taskbar" type of panel. Why do I need a dock if I have a taskbar? It makes sense to have one or the other. But some distros have both at the same time and I don't get it. If you add a dock to MX now you have both the XFCE Panel and Wisker Menu AND another dock? Why? What is the advantage? Can you exchange the Wisker menu and XFCE panel and just have a Mac-like dock?

Seaken64

[seaken64]

Well there are both pros and cos to using docks in general.
I mean lets face it: XFCE looks very outdated with its windows 98 styling and while one can give it a nice paint job it does feel a little old fashioned.
Not saying it needs all kinds of eye candy to look good, I mean the MATE desktop can attest for this as one can tweak that to look from anything from retro windows 98 to a modern near windows 10 appearance (and note i mainly use windows as a point of reference as its still the leading desktop OS so thats the OS most new potential users of MX linux are coming from)
But XFCE at times feels out of date, even compared to MATE.
Do note I understand why this is and yes one must favour stability over eye candy but there can be a balance.

Please explain what you mean. You said "I mean lets face it: XFCE looks very outdated". But I don't understand how that qualifies what you said about docks having both pros and cons.

What are the pros? and what are the cons?

Are you saying that XFCE is outdated because it doesn't use docks? What makes docks better than what XFCE uses?

Personally, I like the XFCE paradigm. I prefer the Taskbar/Start Menu/Panel interface to the MacOS look. I've never liked the Mac interface. But Mac people love it. I always hear people denigrate the classic Windows interface and say it's "old" (as if that was a bad thing!). Yet, when the boys and girls in Redmond tried to change it to be more Modern what happened? And when Ubuntu did the same thing what happened?

There is something to be said about the classic approach of XFCE. I think it's nicer than Windows 10. And it's so much easier to modify to fit my personal taste. I hate Windows file manager. In XFCE I get to choose the file manager I want and it feels like it's part of the system. And the menu system is clean and easy to use, including the search function. Live tiles annoy me and pretty pictures and icons do not improve upon the classic menu in my opinion.

I suppose I should stop listening to Frank Sinatra because he's so outdated. No need for the Beattles, that's so yesterday!

To me, one of the "pros" of XFCE is that it is classic.

Seaken64