Avant Window Navigator

Avant window navigator project's site and the new wiki


Avant Window Navigator
(AWN/Awn) is a dock-like navigation bar for the linux desktop that
positions itself at the bottom of the screen. It can be used to keep
track of open windows and behaves like a normal window list

Installation Guide

Help and Support

• Frequently Asked Questions - Some basic information on installing AWN and fixing common issues
  
• Forum - Get help in the AWN forum
  
• Launchpad Answers - a Launchpad-hosted list of user-submitted questions/answers about Awn
  
• How to Submit Bug Reports - Basic explanation for submitting bug reports on Launchpad
  

Extra

• Plugins - Plugins for other software that interacts with AWN over DBus
  
• Applets - Applets created for Avant Window Navigator
  
• Themes - Customizing the look and feel of your bar
  
• Awn Extras - Applets, Plugins and other extras in a separate Launchpad project
  

Ubuntu users should closely follow the installation instructions on the Awn homepage. Users of other Linux distros can find specific instructions on the homepage, also. Awn is a free download for Linux and requires Affinity.

Prerequisites

1. You need to figure out whether your computer is capable of
   running AWN. Your computer needs to be capable of compositing support,
   which allows for "real" transparency, among other things. This means,
   for example, that you should be able to make translucent/transparent
   any window, and be able to see the windows that are behind it. Your
   distribution may have documentation (either official or user-generated)
   on which compositing method and which X drivers you can use and how to
   install/configure it. This particular topic can be complex depending on
   the hardware and distribution, with users having a wide variety of
   opinions on which combinations work best, so it is greatly preferred
   that it is discussed elsewhere. Here is some information for several
   distributions:
   
   • Gentoo guides (via gentoo-wiki): X11 transparency overview, AIGLX, XGL
     
   • Ubuntu's official desktop-effects guide: Feisty (7.04), Gutsy (7.10), Hardy (8.04)
     
   • openSUSE wiki guides : AIGLX, Xgl
     
   • Fedora wiki: Information on compositing
     
   
   
2. Make sure that your X installation has the "Composite"
   extension enabled. Again, the links above and/or your distribution's
   documentation/user support will help you with this, as this is beyond
   the scope of this document.
   
3. You need to install a compositing manager. There are several currently available:
   
   • Beryl/Compiz/Compiz Fusion: This group tends to be the most
     popular among compositing managers, because of the number of effects
     you can achieve with it, such as "wobbly windows", minimize/maximize
     effects, workspaces laid out on a three-dimensional cube, etc. The
     Beryl project has merged with the Compiz window manager to form the Compiz Fusion project. It is compatible with both Gtk+ and KDE environments. The downside is that it requires OpenGL
     (3D rendering) support that some video card drivers do not currently
     have (for example, older nvidia cards and certain onboard VIA
     chipsets).
     
   • Xfce:
     Recent versions of the Xfce desktop environment (starting from version
     4.2.0) have added support for compositing in its window manager, xfwm4.
     However, this feature is configurable at compile-time with a ./configure
     switch, so if you are running a binary package-based distribution (such
     as Debian or Fedora), you may or may not have this feature.
     
   • Metacity: The default window manager for Gnome. Compositing support was started for this WM in November 2003 (around version 2.7.0), but it has never been very stable. Because of this, it is not enabled in most distributions. Recently though, work started on a new implementation for compositing support that is in version 2.22.0 (and later).
     
   • Cairo Compositing Manager:
     According to its website, it is "a versatile and extensible composite
     manager which [uses] cairo for rendering. Rendering can be done in 2D
     or 3D, using Xrender and Glitz backends." At the time of this writing
     (2007-11-25), the project is in its infancy and under heavy
     development, so your mileage may vary.
     
   • xcompmgr: Back before Compiz was created or Xfce had
     compositing support, this was the way to make windows translucent and
     have drop-shadows. It was more of a proof-of-concept application for
     the new (at the time) Composite extension for X. Unfortunately, this
     application hasn't been updated since 2005, and doesn't have an
     official release. It is not recommended that you use this.
     
   
   

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Adding Awn to the Ubuntu Feisty Repositories
If you are running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04, you can install AWN and Affinity from an Ubuntu repository.

First, edit your apt sources:
gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add these lines to the bottom:
## Avant Window Navigator
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/ feisty avant-window-navigator
deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/ feisty avant-window-navigator

Then do this in a terminal:
wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/8434D43A.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Now to install the stable AWN version do

NOTICE: No stable AWN at this time. It will be added at the next release

For AWN BZR do:
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr

You can install more applets for AWN by doing:
sudo apt-get install awn-core-applets-bzr

The Affinity in this repo requires Tracker to work properly:
sudo apt-get install tracker

For the stable Affinity version do
sudo apt-get install affinity

Or for Affinity SVN do:
sudo apt-get install affinity-svn