Fabien, the dash and indicators are features of Unity, which itself is a compiz-plugin. Compiz is a window-manager, like metacity. But metacity does not have the ability to load compiz-plugins, thus you will never be able to see them if you're running metacity instead of compiz.
Fabien, the dash and indicators are features of Unity, which itself is a compiz-plugin. Compiz is a window-manager, like metacity. But metacity does not have the ability to load compiz-plugins, thus you will never be able to see them if you're running metacity instead of compiz.