Installation

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[edit] Installing Avant Window Navigator

This document is an overview on installing Avant Window Navigator on your computer.

[edit] 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:
  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.
    • 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.

[edit] Installation Type

Now that you've determined that your computer can run AWN, it is time to install the software. There are two methods to install the software:

[edit] Post-Installation

Now that you've installed AWN, you probably want some applets (mini programs associated with AWN) to add more functionality to your dock.

You can also customize how the dock looks with themes.

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