Avant Window Navigator (abbreviated AWN or Awn) is a dock-like bar for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

, which sits on an edge of a user's screen and tracks open windows. Instead of representing open windows as buttons or segments on a bar, it uses large

icons An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...

on a translucent background to increase readability and add visual appeal. The program was created by Neil J. Patel. Both the appearance and functionality of Avant Window Navigator may be customized, and

plugins Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of software t ...

and applets are available, such as to display the progress of a download in

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current a ...

or to control a

music player Music player can refer to: * Various types of musicians: bass player, guitar player, piano player, etc. * Music box * Player piano * Record player * Tape player * Media player software, software running on a computer that can play various type ...

like Rhythmbox. The plugins use the

D-Bus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

IPC IPC may refer to: Computing * Infrastructure protection centre or information security operations center * Instructions per cycle or instructions per clock, an aspect of central-processing performance * Inter-process communication, the sharin ...

system, and applets can be written in C, Python or Vala. A sister project, AWN Extras, is a collection of community-contributed applets and plugins. Releases are usually kept in sync with AWN. One of the major requirements to run older versions of Avant Window Navigator is a compositing window manager. At least version 0.4.0-2 in the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

repos has either Metacity, xcompmgr,

Compiz Compiz () is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as ...

, xfwm4, KWin or Mutter as a dependency. Therefore, the user was required to install a compositor, which could tax performance on low-end systems. Some alternatives were to use a lightweight

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

such as Xfce, which has a compositing manager since version 4.2.0, or to enable compositing in Metacity when using GNOME. However, support for non-composited environments is available in version 0.4.0.Official release blog post
/ref>

References

;Notes * Jack Wallen (12 Aug 2009
Avant Window Navigator: OS X-like dock on Linux desktop
ghacks.net * Dmitri Popov (Jan 30, 2009
Managing Tasks with Avant Window Navigator

Linux Magazine ''Linux Magazine'' is an international magazine for Linux software enthusiasts and professionals. It is published by the former Linux New Media division of the German media company Medialinx AG. The magazine was first published in German in 19 ...

online * Jonathan Roberts (21 July 2007
Gnome Panel Mania

Free Software Magazine ''Free Software Magazine'' (also known as ''FSM'' and originally titled ''The Open Voice'') is a Web site that produces a (generally bi-monthly) mostly free-content online magazine about free software. It was started in November 2004 by Australi ...

column

External links

* - Home of AWN project - Maintained by Povilas Kanapickas (reporting of bugs and issues not permitted, last activity 2014-06-11) * - Project moved to GitHub
AWN Wiki
contains, among other things, installation instructions and a list of FAQs - Site Unknown (as of 2014-12-13)
AWN Forums
- Access to server forbidden (as of 2014-12-13)
Avant Window Navigator (AWN) Mac OS like Dock in openSUSE
at susegeek.com (posting dated 2008-08-02)
Neil J. Patel's Blog
- Blog no longer active (last entry dated 2011-06-12)
Planet AWN
an aggregation of the developers' weblogs - Site Unknown (as of 2014-12-13) {{GTK Application launchers Applications using D-Bus Beta software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in Python Free software programmed in Vala Graphical shells that use GTK Software that uses PyGTK

See also

References

External links