Gnome Program Starter: Dash, Dock or Panel¶

The default program starter on Gnome is called dash and it is a bit strange for users of other operating systems. But there are extensions which provide a move conventional dock like MacOS or a panel like Windows.

The dock can be enabled in Hiera with

gnome::program_starter: dock

other valid values are panel and dash.

The dock is default in RHEL9 as the panel currently has a bug on RHEL9 which limits its usability.

Note that this will only set the default configuration which can be changed by the user.

To reset the user specific configuration run

# only reset gnome dconf settings
dconf reset -f /org/gnome

# reset all dconf settings
dconf reset -f /

# if the commands above does not work
rm  ~/.config/dconf/user

Known Problems¶

Application Grid¶

Applications marked as favorites are not shown in the application grid. This is expected behavior.

Dock¶

Favorite apps might not be shown when certain hardware is connected, see upstream bug.

Panel¶

Empty application grid on RHEL9, see upstream bug.