You gotta auto hide dock no matter what side it goes or you’re giving up too much screen space. You know it’s there anyways, and it reappears immediately when you send your mouse to it. So the only thing it really tells you is what apps are running in the background, which honestly doesn’t justify taking up screen space on a laptop.

Plus, spotlight (or alternatives like Alfred/Raycast) are more convenient app launchers anyways. And switching apps is a bit better via cmd-tab, or better yet, raycast shortcuts or rcmd.

No, we can't agree about that. I use sides for e.g. browser tabs or scroll bars or just plain window resizing etc, so if I had dock on the side then and extra mouse movement could trigger the dock instead of the desired UI element

> because it shortens your screen by about 15%!

it doesn't because it's hidden

That's why I think GNOME made the right decision by hiding it.

Gnomes technically does not have a dock, though.

How is it not a dock? Yeah, you need to access it through the overview, but it still behaves like a dock.