Could you use your WM without any Taskbar ?
 

HI,

Is a taskbar really necessary, such as kicker, tint2, ... gnome-panel? Could you use your WM without any Taskbar ?

If yes, please explain how or better give us a cool screenshot of your high-tech desktop.

thanks!

No, I need a taskbar, I don't see any reason not to have one.

Without taskbar it might be possible with some wm like wmmaker

I use openbox. I would be lost without any taskbar. Usually I have windows everywhere onto my screen, or maybe I should use more those 4 workspaces...

I'm not even sure what your question means! The taskbar is defined as a bar used to launch and monitor running applications (Wikipedia). Kicker and the Gnome panel contain a taskbar, but they are panels. So which do you mean, panel or taskbar? I've never used a taskbar, but I must have a panel for the pager, to say nothing of knowing what the time is and which alphabet I'm going to be typing with.

bar such as kicker, tint2, ... gnome-panel

I have been using WindowMaker for years without a taskbar, so yes :)

I use three gnome panels.

The top one is all about notifications and information.
The bottom one is all about menu, window list, date/time and shutdown switch
The right-side one has small icons for my dozen or so most-use programs.

I do not want or use any other docks or unity or anything. the rest of my desktop is blank except for background and running windows.

No, I could not live without these panels, nor could I live without the traditional menu.

so much panels. Interesting. would you have a screenshot?

Could I live without a panel/taskbar? Yes. My desktop menu contains all the applications and I can hit Alt+Tab so it's entirely possible.
Would I want to? No.
I only have one panel at the top of the screen and it lists running programs, houses the main menu and provides notifications and time display. For the space a panel takes up it's handy to have.
However, if my pattern of use were a little different on my netbook I might choose Ratpoison which has no panels or window borders/decorations.

It's very unobtrusive and low-key. In my 12.04-with-MATE experimental system I have the right panel self-hiding, which gives me problems in 11.04. You could guess you'd see the narwhals if there were no programs open.

Attachment 10747

The careful use of colour and transparency makes it even more low-key.

You can guess that I moved from WinXP to Ubuntu 10.04, and thought, "I can do the same familiar stuff --- and a lot more!"

fvwm2, no taskbar, just a simple look

http://home.comcast.net/~j_mccue/issue/fvwm_01.jpg

That's using more space than a real panel would!
http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/7168/desktopoq.png

What can I say, I like the IconBox :)
Nice setup though.

John

The WMs I use, blackbox and recently i3, don't have a taskbar, so I'm living without one for quite some time now (since Slackware 13.0 with kde 4 was released). :)

Not a problem for me. I do use i3status bar but I could do without it. At the moment it looks like that:
http://www.slackword.net/files/img/task.png