…or so I must have been.

Currently I’m using the XFce panel. It does what it does well, or at least what I currently use it for. It’s a clock, pager, wlan monitor and battery monitor. All which is fine, the thing is - the panel always displays a little bit, it’s never truly gone. I can always see it. That annoys me! Also, it seems, it doesn’t do too much useful stuff. To really justify being constantly on my screen and constantly running it should honestly do more. I want my panel to do something useful! What is that you ask? You tell me! What should a panel do? I don’t want a list of windows the width of my screen - useless for me. I don’t want a menu or pretty clickety icons - I don’t use them.

I know what I don’t know, can you tell me what useful stuff a panel should do - or better, can do? I’m open for suggestions on switching panel, though keep in mind - if you say “kicker” or really any KDE panel I’ll just ignore it, I want a gtk2 one.

It all boils down to, should I drop the panel completely? Or should I switch to something better? Or can the xfce panel already do something more useful? I know about all the plugins included in Mandriva, none seem amazing - I’m currently playing with the weather one.