I’ve been thinking the same… It would be super nice to avoid extensions entirely and get options for the dock being always-visible, extended-height/width, left/bottom/right-placement upstreamed. Maybe with GNOME 41 onward we have an opportunity to do that.
Only this week did I get a reminder just how much ubuntu-dock/dash-to-dock has to hack things to work at all. It’s not something I want to see us carrying into the future.
Totally agree, that would be awesome!
Would we be able to run Ubuntu w/GNOME 40 w/o any of the extra extension for testing purpose? That way we can help you out with always shown dock at the bottom, the new workflow, etc. Also I don’t know how easy it will be with GNOME 40 and extensions, but are there plans to support desktop icons if a user chooses to show them on their system?
When I had the same thought I tried to access the GNOME dash object to make it appear without recreating all this stuff, through a very simple extension. But I did not succeed, looked at dash.js and overview.js.
At least (maybe obviously I have overlooked something) GNOME should make the dash accessible through show/hide public functions?
Oh, some user request have led me to make this TINY extension for GS 40:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4099/no-overview/
to hide overview at session startup.
Something that could be integrated to tweaks?
You can already run Ubuntu without extensions. Either disable them via the app called ‘Extensions’, or enable the vanilla upstream GNOME experience by:
sudo apt install gnome-session
icon and select ‘GNOME’.Last I checked, the desktop icons extensions would refuse to load on GNOME 40 but only because 40 is not yet in the list of supported releases. You can add 40 to the list by editing
the extension’s metadata.json file, and then it does seem to work.
Also just a reminder: GNOME 40 is not coming in Ubuntu 21.04. We expect it in 21.10 in October.
I really like your extensions 
Just because I somehow tried to follow gnome designers here: they do not have a perma dock, thus the desktop is completely empty except the panel after start-up, so users do not see any app icon/shortcut. So they introduced this new start-up mode which makes much sense considering they do not have a dock. Sure, options are nice, but this options is kind of risky/contra-design So I would rather not put this into tweaks
I do understand your point of view
But we must keep in mind that ubuntu offer a permanent dock and the ability to save documents on the desktop.
So we used to see this desktop first after session start. This extension can make sense here.
fthx: thanks for this usefull extension with the future gnome 40
the vertical dock is not working very well with an horizontal workspace layout. But there’s this extension that could let us keep this layout: https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/meesbo/i_wrote_an_extension_to_bring_the_vertical/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Unfortunately implementing this would signify to rely on another GNOME extension prone to break in the future.
I strongly disagree with that. Vertical dock in Ubuntu was originally designed and developed to work both with horizontal and vertical workspace layouts in Unity7. It was a great experience. Only when Ubuntu switched to Gnome 3 did it loose the horizontal workspaces.
@neffscape
Wow! Thanks for the link
I never could have imagined that an extension like this (even though in early stage) could have been released so fast.
I’ve tried it on Manjaro with Gnome 40 and works good… really smooth!
By the way here a couple of direct links:
The first thing I thought was: vertical-overview in combination with Dash to Dock 
(At the moment Dash to Dock doesn’t work in Gnome 40)
Absolutely true.
On the other hand I think that if you have in mind a specific user experience, as Canonical has with Ubuntu, relying on Gnome will constantly bring some headache.
Let’s say, In the end Ubuntu developers will find the way that suits them best. At the moment this extension could be something to take in consideration. The next LTS is not that far away…
We might have multiple options by the time Ubuntu 21.10 is ready…
Given that Gnome 40 already changes several things I think Ubuntu should take the opportunity to finally drop the ubuntu-dock. Other than the maintenance burden the ubuntu-dock is basically a waste of screen estate for little gain. I understand it’s a distinctive trait of Ubuntu, but this alone can’t be a good reason to carry over what nowadays is bad design (it was not so in the early Unity days, but today it just is).
Shipping vanilla Gnome is an excellent option IMHO, but if an always visible dash element has to be kept then dash-to-panel is a much better option, as the panel is mostly empty. The panel was meant to host the applications menus, which are now deprecated. Integrating the dash into the panel really makes sense, and it’s very nice graphically, especially if the panel is placed at the bottom of the screen
Well , Left Dock is Ubuntu signature for good usage of the screen , you loose less vertical pixels.
I really wish it stays that way , people have a lot of options if they want a different layout.
IMO this is a really small detail , we should fix applications and appstore first
I’m sorry but this “little” gain is a game changer to those people who mostly interact with their computer using mouse, compered to vanilla gnome.
Do you aware that vanilla gnome doesn’t have min/max window buttons? Also vanilla gnome do not have app-indicators on which some big applications rely on?
Also vanilla gnome is broken at it’s core. It looks like tablet OS but doesn’t act like one. You don’t have easy way to manipulate your windows other than close them, you can not hide them because in vanilla it’s pointless as there is no panel that indicate that app is running and you can’t easily bring hidden app back. What it should do instead, to not be broken, is to launch apps ALWAYS maximized and have ability to auto tile said windows to left and right part of the screen.
That’s retained by using dash-to-panel.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear: I meant stop shipping an extra extension to add a dash somewhere, keeping what Gnome does by default in this regard. I didn’t mean dropping all the Ubuntu customization.
I can see the value of having an always visible dash. I’m not sure if this value wins over the drawbacks, however once decided that it does, I think the dash-to-panel way is the best option we have, mostly due to its efficient use of screen estate (remember the Gnome panel is already there and always visible).
Personally, I appreciate the dash-to-panel extension. (And the desktop icons). If GNOME’s own dock doesn’t remove any conveniences I wouldn’t mind using it I suppose. That said, I really like the left vertical dock. Until this point in time, I have tried GNOME with no extensions on several occasions and tried to adapt to that sort of workflow, and this may not sound totally objective, but I simply do not like it at all.
There is a real storm going on in the discussion of this article stoked by fears that there may be anti-extension sentiment growing within some GNOME devs: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/07/why-gnome-does-what-gnome-does-by-tobias-bernard
I am grateful that Ubuntu devs are working so hard to keep GNOME sane for ‘the rest of us’. I couldn’t have outfitted the ones I have with Ubuntu (coming from Windows) had it not been for the baked-in extensions.
Just my own $0.02
Currently I’m more excited to see triple buffering on GNOME to get rid of lags.
Imo the best way is to continue with a Dash to dock on the left side. It is an established design and workflow feature of Ubuntu. It’s basically its signature.
Not to mention that in the experience of many it has proven to be much superior placement position for the dock than the bottom position. That is also supported by data Ubuntu initially did when designing Unity7. Nothing has changed since then to make that conclusion less relevant. If anything it is more relevant today when we moved from 16:10 to 16:9 display ratio.
Dash to dock with left placement all the way. I’d just add that imo Ubuntu should bring the Close, Min, Max buttons back to the left side of the header bar by default as it was a part of the original UX.