Install Cairo-Dock in Kali Linux

Cairo-Dock is a desktop interface that takes the shape of docks, desklets, panel and applets. It is designed to be light, fast and customizable, and is desktop-agnostic. It has a powerful DBus interface, to be controlled from a terminal or another application. Features can be added by plug-ins or applets, and applets can be written in C or in any language. Most actions can be done from keyboard. It is compatible with Compiz-Fusion, Beryl, Compiz and Xcompmgr, but it can also run without a composite manager (using fake transparency). Cairo-Dock can run under GNOME, KDE and XFCE.

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Install Cairo-Dock in Kali Linux

To install cairo-dock you need to do the followings:

1. Install Cairo Dock from Kali Repo
2. Install Cairo-dock from Cairo-docks repo
   • Add Cairo-Dock repo in Kali Linux sources.list file
   • Add GPG Keys
   • Update package list via apt-get
3. Install Cairo-Dock and Plugins
4. Run Cairo-Dock

Install Cairo-Dock from Kali Linux Repo

If you’ve used the official Kali Linux repository, then you can install Cairo-Dock and all it’s requirements directly from Kali Linux repository.

Use the following command to install Cairo-Dock in Kali Linux from Official Kali Linux repository:

aptitude -r install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

This will install all cairo-dock, it’s plugins and any recommended packages. Move to Running Cairo-Dock section from there.

Install Cairo-dock from Cairo-docks repo

In case you don’t want to install Cairo-dock from Kali Linux’s official repository, you can always add the repository for Cairo-dock and install from there.

Add Cairo-Dock repo in Kali Linux

First you need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

add the following line

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/glxdock/repository/debian stable cairo-dock

Save and exit the file

Install GPG key

wget -q http://download.tuxfamily.org/glxdock/repository/cairo-dock.gpg -O- | apt-key add -

Update package list

Update source list

apt-get update

Install Cairo-Dock and Plugins

Run the following command to install Cairo-Dock and plugins

apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

Run Cairo-Dock

Now you can launch Cairo-dock from
Applications  —> System tools —> cairo-Dock

Conclusion

Cairo-Dock is a nice tool to have and it adds some color to your Kali Linux’s boring desktop. I like monitoring and weather applets. They also got many theme’s that you can play with.

In fact since writing this post, I’ve done some more editing and ended up having a great Desktop. I’ve used black-element theme, conky-color and cairo-dock. Wallpaper was downloaded from Wallpaperswide. What a great community! Here’s a new screenshot of this desktop

Thanks for reading. Enjoy and share.