First of all, I’d like to say that I am a happy Debian user, and I will not change it for any other distro – I have my reasons.
At work I use Debian testing (lenny) in a ThinkPad T42 as my official operating system. Additional to Debian I installed the LTC internal Linux distro, based on Ubuntu Gutsy, that I use as a “security system”, if some IBM application decides not work on Debian. At home, I have a desktop with Debian stable (etch).
After read a VentureCake post about “Using Avant without Gnome panel“, I decided to look closer this new window manager (new for me, because I’ve never heard about it before). As my first step, I looked the Avant window Manger official site to learn more. There, I saw that there are not official and stable (at least for me) packages of avant for Debian. So, my unique option was try it in Ubuntu.
Once Ubuntu is a son of Debian, it was very easy install avant (I love apt 
). First, I added the following lines in my /etc/apt/sources.list file:
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deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
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deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
Then, I had to download the repository key:
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wget -q http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/reacocard.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
After that, it was time to install the packages:
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sudo apt-get update
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sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr
OK. The avant was installed!!! Once installed, I gone to Applications → Accessories → Avant Window Navigator, and the little dock bar was running. I did some modifications on its default configurations (System → Preferences → Awn manager).
So, my screen now have a nice dock bar:
