As promised, today's tutorial is here to help actual and future Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) users to install the latest AWN (Avant Window Navigator) from sources. Of course that the "source installation" method is just a temporary resource to get that superb dock on your desktop, until Ubuntu developers will update AWN (which is now at version 0.2.1).

But first, a little history lesson about AWN. OK? Good... You should know that Avant Window Navigator, also known as AWN, is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of the screen. It has support for launchers, task lists, and third party applets. To get a better idea about what we are talking about here, take a look at the image on the left!

I have tried to make this guide as simple as possible, for every user to follow it and obtain a working AWN installation in the end. For an easy reading, I will break the guide in three big steps: Installing Dependencies, AWN Compilation, AWN Applets Compilation!

Let's begin, shall we?