Desktop Environments

Crystal Dock – dock (desktop panel) for the Linux desktop

A dock is a graphical user interface element that allows the user to have one-click access to frequently used software. This type of utility also enables users to switch quickly between applications, as well as to monitor programs. This type of application is an excellent way of extending the functionality and usefulness of the desktop.

Crystal Dock is a cool desktop panel with parabolic zooming effect for KDE Plasma 6. While visually it is inspired by Mac OS X’s Dock, it aims to follow the traditional Linux model of desktop panel.

Crystal Dock 2.x only supports Wayland. If you prefer X11, you’ll have to make do with the older version Crystal Dock 1.x.

Installation

We evaluated Crystal Dock v2.0 under Kubuntu 24.04 LTS and Manjaro.

For Manjaro, there’s a package in the Arch User Repository which we installed using pamac (Manjaro’s front-end installation tool).

Crystal Dock installation

On our fairly vanilla test system, there are a few dependencies needed, but the GUI pamac tool installs them for us.

Crystal Dock installation

Next page: Page 2 – In Operation and Summary

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary

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