PerlPanel is an attempt to build a useable, lean panel program (like the Gnome Panel or the KDE Kicker) in Perl, using the Gtk2-Perl libraries. PerlPanel is the ideal accompaniment to a light-weight Window Manager such as OpenBox, or a desktop-drawing program like iDesk.

Most of PerlPanel's features are provided by applets - simple widgets that each do a different job. PerlPanel currently ships with 34 applets.