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I use a few tweaks on my customized taskbar, and it would be very comfortable to have two rows of taskbar to put more shortcuts for the most important utilities & tools. My bar is filled with real time stats like: Core/GPU etc. temp., internet speed & traffic, and there is little space left for shortcuts. If by any chance it's possible to add another row of taskbar to add shortcuts, I would be grateful.

K7AAY
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Dominik Dratvinski
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  • You can have 4 panels in gnome2: top, bottom, left and right. I would advice to add one opposite of what you have now and add all the icons onto that one that are information. (Cinnamon based OS; Ubuntu budgie etc) Or use a dock for the clickable icons. cpu core etc are more informal than clicks – Rinzwind Feb 20 '20 at 09:18

2 Answers2

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In short: no.

Gnome shell, the desktop environment used by Ubuntu, will not be quite suited for this. It is a desktop that by design moves away from the presence of a plentitute of icons and controls in plain sight. By default, extensions are needed to have a task bar in Gnome. Unless some day an extension allows to have a two or multiple row layout on the bar, it won't be possible with the shell.

You could ass a lightweight taskbar such as Tint2 to your Gnome desktop.You can have multiple tint panels running.

However, it looks more that you will be better served with another desktop environment. Ubuntu Mate is based on the classic Gnome 2 desktop, and allows to freely add panes and controls everywhere, including doubling the height of the pane. Also the XFCE and KDE desktops (defaults in Xubuntu and Kubuntu) are extremely customizable and may better adapt to your needs.

vanadium
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  • Thank you! Tint2 + tint2 conf did the job. I have switched the default bar to be on the top and the light tint2 to be on the bottom and customized it on my will. Thanks again. – Dominik Dratvinski Feb 29 '20 at 20:24
  • You can also add a second panel through the Dash to Panel extension (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/) – ChennyStar Oct 29 '23 at 11:34
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You can make and configure a second panel and move it to rest immediately above (or below) the first panel.

May I also suggest, as an alternative, the use of Conky to provide the information you wish to monitor? See https://vitux.com/how-to-install-conky-and-conky-manager-on-ubuntu/ and http://conky.sourceforge.net/documentation.html to learn more.

K7AAY
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    I have read about conky, but a few users commented that for ubuntu 18.04 lts it's been outdated. I will try both suggested ways and let know which one worked for me better. – Dominik Dratvinski Feb 19 '20 at 21:31
  • A reply that links to how it worked in Ubuntu 11.04? – vanadium Feb 20 '20 at 08:57
  • @DominikDratvinski conky is practically abandoned: it is not updated to function with python 3. – Rinzwind Feb 20 '20 at 09:19
  • even though abandoned, actually, conky still works (Ubuntu 18.04 lts) and gives some real-time data on cpu & ram % use. Quite comfortable, and thanks K7AAY. But what I really wanted is to increase quick visibility of all useful tools I need in gui mode. – Dominik Dratvinski Feb 29 '20 at 20:08