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I recently installed Ubuntu 16.04. And I saw this image online somewhere:

enter image description here

I like how icons are sitting at the bottom rather than on the side. And there is some text appearing at the side along with the time in a nice font.

I apologize if this is a silly question but I am new to all this. Thanks.

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    Go through this linuxandubuntu.com/home/… , if you need that dock install something like plank/cairo dock/docky
    – hellozee
    Jan 2, 2018 at 6:00
  • this appears to be a KDE desktop with a glass theme
    – ravery
    Jan 2, 2018 at 7:04
  • The text appearing is most probably conky. The dock could be a Latte plasmoid if this is indeed KDE, though there are a great number of docks available.
    – Bruni
    Jan 2, 2018 at 8:35

2 Answers 2

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Google reverse image search tells me that the picture is from here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140808134149/https://builtvisible.com/ubuntu-intrepid-ibex-installation/.

In the screenshot, it's Ubuntu 8.10 (that's almost 10 years old now, and the 2008 date shown confirms this), Using Compiz for desktop animations, Emerald (window decoration border theming), AWN (Dock), and Conky for the display on the right.

If you want to get something similar on Ubuntu 16.04, there's several possibilities:

  • Ubuntu 16.04 has an option to put the dock / sidebar on the bottom of the screen, although you'll need to install Unity Tweak Tool to enable it. See here for more details.

  • For the display on the right, you can install conky - it has a lot of options and can display almost anything. (I spent many hours fiddling with it...)

  • If you really want to exactly replicate that screenshot, You'll need MATE desktop (Ubuntu MATE , comes with it), then install Compiz reloaded (Ubuntu MATE comes with it) which AFAIK includes Emerald to get you those semi-translucent themed widow borders, Conky for the display on the desktop, and then a dock (e.g. Plank. AWN Doesn't really exist anymore, but maybe you can still get it to work..?).

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  • For a bar with application icons you can also use docky.
    – nobody
    Jan 2, 2018 at 11:44
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Move launcher from side to bottom

Assuming you don't want to install a totally new desktop, you can simply move the launcher from the side to the bottom with this command:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher launcher-position bottom

Reference


Use Conky to display time

As mentioned in comments the time is most likely created using Conky. You can find many examples on setting up Conky in Ubuntu Forums. Here is my humble Conky display:

Conky Realtime Network 4

Someone commented in jest about making Conky run at 60Hz. I thought it would be fun to try so changed the refresh rate from .75 times per second to .0167 times per second which is about 60 Hz or 60 Frames Per Second:

Conky 60hz.gif

Sorry about the hole in the middle it normally has nVidia GPU information but I've booted with Intel iGPU and am trying to find out how to get performance statistics on it.

Notice how Conky CPU percentage jumps from .5% at normal speed to about 5% at 60Hz speed. Also note my browser doesn't refresh the screen as fast as the .gif that is running (it's about 3 to 4 times slower?).

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    The sample rate of the gif doesn't match the update rate of the display. Please fix. :-)
    – wizzwizz4
    Jan 2, 2018 at 14:00
  • @wizzwizz4 Just for fun I made a gif running at 60 Hz :). Jan 3, 2018 at 0:21
  • <jk>-1 gif does not play in real time on my Pentium II.</jk> I meant that the sample rate of the gif didn't line up with the sample rate of Conky, so there was a beat frequency where some frames would be identical and some would be unique and it looked jerky, but it's good to know what Conky can cope with! :-)
    – wizzwizz4
    Jan 3, 2018 at 18:01

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