EDIT: As it turns out this is just how gnome is supposed to look and to get a permanently visible dock showing running apps and favorites I must install an extension like dash-to-dock

Thanks everyone to help me understand I was the problem here 🙂

After using Ubuntu for years I thought it would be a good idea to try out plain old Debian for the first time.

So I downloaded the live-Image setup a VirtualBox and started installing it… installation ran trough without any problems. But I don’t see any panel/taskbar anywhere.

I tried to google this and best guess was that gonme-panel was not installed (how?) after installation I tried to run it by the terminal but it only trows an error “(gnome-panel:3427): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 20:24:58.712: invalid cast from ‘GdkWaylandDisplay’ to ‘GdkX11Display’”. So before I start digging into this I just wanted to confirm that I am on the right track and not just mixing stuff up. So does anyone have an idea what went wrong here?

  • FeyterOP
    3•1 year ago

    Thanks man. That is both a relief and a shock for me.

    Debian unser actually prefer it this way?

    • Transient Punk
      3•1 year ago

      I think the safer generalization to make is that the Gnome 3 project leaders prefer it that way.

      Debian just doesn’t tweak it, likely in favor of increased stability.

    • @[email protected]
      2•1 year ago

      As the other user also pointed out, it’s not Debian but rather the Gnomeproject that is by default pushing this workflow and look-and-feel style. If you try Fedora or Archlinux for instance, you will also find the same Gnome desktop (with a different wallpaper). That said, dash-to-dock is one of the most famous and installed extensions, so this means that many users prefer that workflow, but many also apparently just use gnome without a dock. When I was using Gnome, just for reference, I had dash-to-dock, but most of the times when I needed to launch an application I would just use the shortcut to open the search menu (which coming from KDE I remapped to alt + space)

      • Transient Punk
        1•1 year ago

        I also use dash-to-dock, but, generally, I just hit the super key and type what I want to run. So not too far off from the native workflow. I mostly like the dock as a way to, at a glance, keep tabs on what I have open, and what needs my attention. Opening a separate context menu for that functionally seems unwieldy at best.