Why is the Dock becoming more and more popular? It’s probably got something to do with clever window management, doesn’t it? Well, in my opinion it’s just the eye candy, though I’m sure that people appreciate the psychological trick; every tried to open 2 instances of a program with a Dock? 
Now here’s a list of 5 different Docks you can use on Linux. They have different system requirements. Rock out!
5. SimDock
I’ll start off with a little low.end dock. Just enough to get you started. While SimDock isn’t extremely advanced, it offers a full-fledged dock, all in one little .deb package and no window compositing effects required, which means you’ll be able t run it on low-end machines without any problems.
4. Ksmoothdock
Smooth zooming, low requirements. I like SimDock, but many users tell me Ksmoothdock looks and works better with their KDE DE.
3. Kiba Dock
Small, nice, free. What more could you ask for? Kiba-dock was originally a project meant to demo the Akamaru physics engine, but it ended up being a separate project.
2. Engage Dock (for Enlightenment)
Ever wondered how the gOS dudes made a smooth little dock for the gPC? Well, here’s your answer. It’s cool even without the Green theme I heard it can run without Enlightenment, too. Dreamlinux uses it with XFCE, for instance.
The big guy. This is the Dock with the bad-ass themes, icons and plugins. Everyone who has compositing turned on uses AWN these days. Why? It’s powerful, customizable and pretty. I use it sometimes, although it affects Ubuntu’s loading time. (it’s Compiz’ fault, really). If you got the power, go for it! Also, check out the AWN wiki.
Update:
0.5 Cairo Dock
Another cool dock, which also requires compositing effects.
It’s been said that FireFox Mobile is due in late 2008. A great surprise, because the Minimo browser really got whooped by Opera Mini and its innovations, even on smaller mobile devices, such as older mobile phones. Besides, I hate Minimo.
The UI design mock-up already exists, for touch-screens. Now this looks like old news, but you have probably noticed that since October 2007 not much has happened: there is a chance for FireFox to win Opera Mini users over to its side. The community will enable you to customize the browser, and we’ll be seeing some speed tweaks, hopefully.
I’m just saying: if Deepfish goes cellular, we’re in for a war. Did you know that Nokia’s S60 browser, which is described by users as whoop-ass, is also open source?
Last but not least, I would like to thank God for not having a war between a crappy browser with 90% percent of market share, but rather between very good browsers, all with their own pros and cons.
You don’t have a lot of time. On the operating system market, there are lots of great products, like Linux. With Linux, you can easily customize the look and feel of your system, tweak every aspect of the desktop to your specific needs. What many people forget to tell you is that this can take hours of work.
So how will you get your favorite daily comics to show up on your grandmother’s old ThinkPad?
If you have a passable Internet connection, there are ways of keeping everything on a server, instead of on your computer. Besides this, there is a growing range of web services, apps and sites available, which allow you to manage your daily lightweight computing and entertainment. Data security is an issue, although if you’re really worried about your documents, you can easily host some web apps on your own.
Web Operating Systems
Why not? Your tasks are performed mainly by the server your Web OS is on. In most cases you get a full desktop which you can tweak to your hearts desire, a basic office suite, and other everyday apps, like mail readers, FTP clients and other useful software. But the best part is, your fully customized desktop is available anywhere, anytime, in any (mainstream) browser, at its web address. I’ll name a few of my personal favorites: EyeOS (it got a Yahoo! tech award just recently, congrats!), Cloudo (still in alpha) and G.ho.st (3 gigs of space).
Of course, as always, Mashable compiled a mammoth list of +46. This guy scares me with his lists.
Mashups or customized jumping-off pages
More famous bloggers put these sites into the same category as Web operating systems, but I disagree, you will se why. Netvibes is one of the best data personalized data sites out there. There’s also iGoogle and Pageflakes. I use Netvibes, though (least kludgy). With an account at sites like these you can create a mashup of all the data you need to start and organize your day. Be it a simple Gmail checker, RSS feed, or a full-fledged to-do list, calendar, calculator, the possibilities are limitless. The community also creates its own widgets, and there are already thousands in the directory to choose from. So, while you don’t get a desktop, you can, theoretically, get a similar functionality.
Online apps
Zoho Office, Google Docs, Buzzword, Conceptshare, ThinkFree Office: all attempt to replace the software you are using now on your desktop. While they may not have all the features you notice in your full Microsoft Office 13, most people don’t even need them and a simple app like Google Docs can satisfy your word-processing hunger. At least the gOS team thinks so…
So there you have it. Even though there are other ways to synchronize your desktop software, you will always have a big advantage if you manage to keep them on the Internet and in your browser window.
And now a question for the readers:
Do you use any of these services? Why?
I’m writing this post on my Macbook in a hotel, using a 30 min WLAN coupon. Luckily, I stored all of my crucial sites I must have access to immediately as I log on, at Nevibes. It’s very simple stuff, everyone can do it. Of course, those using Firefox are always ahead, although Opera enables you to synchronize your browser.
Here are some tools which help you manage and store your online bookmarks:
Do you still keep your bookmarks the old way?
I just found about about a new start-up on the social media scene (in beta) , called Hurox.
Normally, what should follow is a description of this web 2.0 ’service’ website, but I’m still deciding what to say. Roughly said, Hurox wants to be everything.
The sheer wealth of information and apps, which Hurox provides, is a bit overwhelming for the newbie user, and that’s why I think it won’t be as appealing to such Internet users. Instant messaging, listening to music, selling art, they even managed to integrate a friggin’ online desktop environment!
Upon signing up, Hurox asks you a few questions to learn about your interests. This enables you to customize Hurox to some degree (I still see a lot of ‘coming soon’ labels on the site).
I’m still getting used to the interface (waaay to much information), I’ll probably post an update later and we’ll see if Hurox will avoid the dreaded Dead-pool.
And no matter what others are saying about it, I think the guys at Hurox made a brave step towards creating the ultimate entrance to the Internet. Props for that.
P.S. I don’t know why, but I find the site to be extremely amusing, reminds me of the “999,999 games in 1!” cartridges for the Sega Mega Drive 
