[xmonad] Vanilla Xmonad distribution

[Alexander Genaud]

Years ago, I set my girlfriend up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and xmonad (0.8 or
0.9 maybe). With minor tweaks, mod4Mask, etc, it just worked for years.

This weekend, I tried to set up Linux Mint Mate, then Cinnamon, then
Xubuntu (Xfce) with xmonad-0.11, each with their own unique issues. Xubuntu
was most promising, but just doesn't work very well (panel disappears, or
meta-key is intercepted such that Win-1 or Win-Shift-Return are typed into
the highlighted app or ignored). I am reading a hodge-podge of different
config tutorials focusing on an assortment of versions. I have not come
across an installation/config wiki page that seemed relevant and up to date.

I'm willing to install just about any distribution (not Arch nor Gentoo)
and nearly any DE, but I'd like all the niceties of a stable (LTS-ish) DE
with graphical networking, application selection menus, panel,
notifications, but with the latest xmonad tile windowing. I like the idea
of Xfce because it's light weight and easy. Gnome2 fallback is fine too. I
expected Mate would 'just work'.

Is there a stable reference distro? Can someone point me to a tutorial from
late 2014 or 2015 for installing xmonad on a recently distro?

[Michael Norrish]

I’d also be very interested in hearing about what recent received wisdom is on this front.

Michael

Years ago, I set my girlfriend up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and xmonad (0.8 or 0.9 maybe). With minor tweaks, mod4Mask, etc, it just worked for years.
This weekend, I tried to set up Linux Mint Mate, then Cinnamon, then Xubuntu (Xfce) with xmonad-0.11, each with their own unique issues. Xubuntu was most promising, but just doesn't work very well (panel disappears, or meta-key is intercepted such that Win-1 or Win-Shift-Return are typed into the highlighted app or ignored). I am reading a hodge-podge of different config tutorials focusing on an assortment of versions. I have not come across an installation/config wiki page that seemed relevant and up to date.
I'm willing to install just about any distribution (not Arch nor Gentoo) and nearly any DE, but I'd like all the niceties of a stable (LTS-ish) DE with graphical networking, application selection menus, panel, notifications, but with the latest xmonad tile windowing. I like the idea of Xfce because it's light weight and easy. Gnome2 fallback is fine too. I expected Mate would 'just work'.
Is there a stable reference distro? Can someone point me to a tutorial from late 2014 or 2015 for installing xmonad on a recently distro?
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http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xmonad

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[Alain Bertrand]

Post by Michael Norrish
I’d also be very interested in hearing about what recent received wisdom is on this front.
Michael

Years ago, I set my girlfriend up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and xmonad (0.8 or 0.9 maybe). With minor tweaks, mod4Mask, etc, it just worked for years.
This weekend, I tried to set up Linux Mint Mate, then Cinnamon, then Xubuntu (Xfce) with xmonad-0.11, each with their own unique issues. Xubuntu was most promising, but just doesn't work very well (panel disappears, or meta-key is intercepted such that Win-1 or Win-Shift-Return are typed into the highlighted app or ignored). I am reading a hodge-podge of different config tutorials focusing on an assortment of versions. I have not come across an installation/config wiki page that seemed relevant and up to date.
I'm willing to install just about any distribution (not Arch nor Gentoo) and nearly any DE, but I'd like all the niceties of a stable (LTS-ish) DE with graphical networking, application selection menus, panel, notifications, but with the latest xmonad tile windowing. I like the idea of Xfce because it's light weight and easy. Gnome2 fallback is fine too. I expected Mate would 'just work'.

Hi,
Sorry, but could you describe exactly what are the problems you encountered?

I run xmonad on a linuxmint 17.1 box. I use xfce-4 panel which give me
access to all the joys of a clickodrome computer. I can start manually
both thunar and nemo if I want (which is only the case when I need to
mount a drive ; if someone could advise me how to do it easily on the
CLI, I would' be glad).

I run also xmonad on my debian stable laptop with fp panel or no panel
and I have no criticism to exprime.

Best regards,

Alain

[Jack Hill]

(which is only the case when I need to mount a drive ; if someone could
advise me how to do it easily on the CLI, I would' be glad).

I've been using bashmount <https://github.com/jamielinux/bashmount> for
this purpose.

Best,
Jack

[Tamas Papp]

Hi Alexander,

I am using Debian/unstable, and it works fine. Here is what I would
suggest:

1. Install xmonad using cabal, with all the flags. Install the -dev
libraries whenever it complains it is missing something and try again.

2. Start XFCE with the following .xsession file:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr
/usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 &
exec startxfce4 --with-ck-launch
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

3. start

xmonad --replace

from XFCE (session/app autostart or something like this).

4. start xmobar from there also.

Hope this helps,

Tamas

Post by Alexander Genaud
Years ago, I set my girlfriend up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and xmonad (0.8 or
0.9 maybe). With minor tweaks, mod4Mask, etc, it just worked for years.
This weekend, I tried to set up Linux Mint Mate, then Cinnamon, then
Xubuntu (Xfce) with xmonad-0.11, each with their own unique issues. Xubuntu
was most promising, but just doesn't work very well (panel disappears, or
meta-key is intercepted such that Win-1 or Win-Shift-Return are typed into
the highlighted app or ignored). I am reading a hodge-podge of different
config tutorials focusing on an assortment of versions. I have not come
across an installation/config wiki page that seemed relevant and up to date.
I'm willing to install just about any distribution (not Arch nor Gentoo)
and nearly any DE, but I'd like all the niceties of a stable (LTS-ish) DE
with graphical networking, application selection menus, panel,
notifications, but with the latest xmonad tile windowing. I like the idea
of Xfce because it's light weight and easy. Gnome2 fallback is fine too. I
expected Mate would 'just work'.
Is there a stable reference distro? Can someone point me to a tutorial from
late 2014 or 2015 for installing xmonad on a recently distro?
_______________________________________________
xmonad mailing list
http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xmonad

[Brandon Allbery]

Post by Alexander Genaud
This weekend, I tried to set up Linux Mint Mate

I'm curious what problems you ran into here. (Also, did you use xmonad from
darcs? There is XMonad.Config.Mate which clears up most of the
discrepancies between Gnome 2 and Mate, and which I am using with Mint's
Mate.) The only one I have noticed is needing to restart mate-panel due to
a timing bug which is fixed upstream but not yet released; but that is
unrelated to xmonad (it's triggered by VMware guest switching to full
resolution after the panel starts).

[Alexander Genaud]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Having had great success with
Gnome2-fallback in the past, I decided to try Mate out again with the
latest xmonad-contrib (is that what everyone means by latest xmonad from
darcs?).

I started with a fresh install of Linux Mint 17.1 with Mate, updated, etc.
I installed xmonad and cabal-install. I was not able to install
xmonad-contrib (command line details below). Any suggestions?

Additionally, I have the most basic xmonad.hs file, yet cannot re-compile
(Could not find package 'XMonad'). The xmonad-contrib is not available via
Mint's apt-get.

Mint's xmonad.desktop file is nearly identical to the config described
here: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_MATE . However, the
dconf suggestion does not work. Selecting 'Xmonad' from the GUI Login
displays the GHC/xmonad --recompile error again and otherwise presents a
blank xmonad session. I have no terminal, probably because I cannot compile
'terminal = "mate-terminal"' in xmonad.hs. Alt-Shift-Q works: logout.
Selecting 'gnome-xmonad.desktop' is equally useless (though technically
working).

Post by Alain Bertrand
Sorry, but could you describe exactly what are the problems you

encountered?

With XFCE, I was able to get a semi-working system from a freshly installed
Xubuntu. In a vanilla XFCE session, 'xmonad --replace' from the command
line seems to work. But I could not start a fresh session with Xmonad. At
best, the panel would not display (although it was running) and there would
be a blank/transparent tile. I removed most Mate keyboard shortcuts, yet
Meta-Shift-Return only sometimes opened a terminal.

I was not able to get Cinnamon to work at all -- I don't recall the
specific issues.

I don't recall my earlier issues with Mint/Mate, but I've described several
issues above and some command line details below.



# apt-get install xmonad cabal-install

# xmonad --version
xmonad 0.11

# cabal --version
cabal-install version 1.16.0.2
using version 1.16.0 of the Cabal library

# cabal install xmonad-contrib
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring X11-1.6.1.2...
...etc...
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xinerama.h... no
WARNING: Xinerama headers not found. Building without Xinerama support
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xrandr.h... no
configure: error: X11/extensions/Xrandr.h (from libXrandr) is required
Failed to install X11-1.6.1.2
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
X11-1.6.1.2 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1
X11-xft-0.3.1 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.
xmonad-0.11 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.
xmonad-contrib-0.11.3 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.

The following did not help
# apt-get install xorg xinerama, libXrandr, X11-utils, etc

# Xorg -version
X.Org X Server 1.15.1
Release Date: 2014-04-13


$ cat xmonad.hs
import XMonad
main = xmonad defaultConfig { modMask = mod4Mask }


$ xmonad --recompile; cat xmonad.errors
xmonad.hs:1:8
Could not find module 'XMonad'
... etc ...


# apt-get install dconf-cli
$ dconf read /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager
(nothing)

$ dconf write /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager xmonad
error: 0-6:unknown keyword

[Carlos López-Camey]

Hi Alexander, latest xmonad is version is 0.12 which was released quite a
while ago, it's strange Mint didn't pick the latest.

Can you try installing xmonad-contrib as follows? I found this in here:
http://xmonad.org/intro.html

cabal install xmonad-contrib --flags="-use_xft"

If that fails.. try to install X11 with cabal and not with apt-get
(cabal install X11 --flags="-use_xft").

I would recommend compiling xmonad from source with cabal to get xmonad
0.12, you need darcs for that (just execute "cabal install darcs"). Then
you would use darcs to get the sources like this:

darcs get http://code.haskell.org/xmonad
darcs get http://code.haskell.org/XMonadContrib

When you want to compile the downloaded sources, you just execute "cabal
install" inside each of the folders (first xmonad and then XMonadContrib).

I also tried to run xmonad with Cinnamon once but they have their own
window manager, it seems it's coupled with the desktop environment. I asked
if there were efforts to separate the WM like a year ago but got no
response from the authors.

Post by Alexander Genaud
Thanks for all the suggestions. Having had great success with
Gnome2-fallback in the past, I decided to try Mate out again with the
latest xmonad-contrib (is that what everyone means by latest xmonad from
darcs?).
I started with a fresh install of Linux Mint 17.1 with Mate, updated, etc.
I installed xmonad and cabal-install. I was not able to install
xmonad-contrib (command line details below). Any suggestions?
Additionally, I have the most basic xmonad.hs file, yet cannot re-compile
(Could not find package 'XMonad'). The xmonad-contrib is not available via
Mint's apt-get.
Mint's xmonad.desktop file is nearly identical to the config described
here: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_MATE . However, the
dconf suggestion does not work. Selecting 'Xmonad' from the GUI Login
displays the GHC/xmonad --recompile error again and otherwise presents a
blank xmonad session. I have no terminal, probably because I cannot compile
'terminal = "mate-terminal"' in xmonad.hs. Alt-Shift-Q works: logout.
Selecting 'gnome-xmonad.desktop' is equally useless (though technically
working).

Post by Alain Bertrand
Sorry, but could you describe exactly what are the problems you

encountered?
With XFCE, I was able to get a semi-working system from a freshly
installed Xubuntu. In a vanilla XFCE session, 'xmonad --replace' from the
command line seems to work. But I could not start a fresh session with
Xmonad. At best, the panel would not display (although it was running) and
there would be a blank/transparent tile. I removed most Mate keyboard
shortcuts, yet Meta-Shift-Return only sometimes opened a terminal.
I was not able to get Cinnamon to work at all -- I don't recall the
specific issues.
I don't recall my earlier issues with Mint/Mate, but I've described
several issues above and some command line details below.
# apt-get install xmonad cabal-install
# xmonad --version
xmonad 0.11
# cabal --version
cabal-install version 1.16.0.2
using version 1.16.0 of the Cabal library
# cabal install xmonad-contrib
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring X11-1.6.1.2...
...etc...
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xinerama.h... no
WARNING: Xinerama headers not found. Building without Xinerama support
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xrandr.h... no
configure: error: X11/extensions/Xrandr.h (from libXrandr) is required
Failed to install X11-1.6.1.2
ExitFailure 1
X11-xft-0.3.1 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.
xmonad-0.11 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.
xmonad-contrib-0.11.3 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install.
The following did not help
# apt-get install xorg xinerama, libXrandr, X11-utils, etc
# Xorg -version
X.Org X Server 1.15.1
Release Date: 2014-04-13
$ cat xmonad.hs
import XMonad
main = xmonad defaultConfig { modMask = mod4Mask }
$ xmonad --recompile; cat xmonad.errors
xmonad.hs:1:8
Could not find module 'XMonad'
... etc ...
# apt-get install dconf-cli
$ dconf read /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager
(nothing)
$ dconf write /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager xmonad
error: 0-6:unknown keyword
_______________________________________________
xmonad mailing list
http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xmonad

[Brandon Allbery]

Post by Carlos López-Camey
I also tried to run xmonad with Cinnamon once but they have their own
window manager, it seems it's coupled with the desktop environment. I asked
if there were efforts to separate the WM like a year ago but got no
response from the authors.

It can't be separated.

[Brandon Allbery]

Post by Carlos López-Camey
Hi Alexander, latest xmonad is version is 0.12 which was released quite a
while ago, it's strange Mint didn't pick the latest.

Um, no. 0.11 is latest; 0.12 is unreleased darcs version (admittedly we're
overdue for a release...).

[Daniel Wagner]

Post by Alexander Genaud
# cabal install xmonad-contrib
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring X11-1.6.1.2...
...etc...
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xinerama.h... no
WARNING: Xinerama headers not found. Building without Xinerama support
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h usability... no
checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h presence... no
checking for X11/extensions/Xrandr.h... no
configure: error: X11/extensions/Xrandr.h (from libXrandr) is required
Failed to install X11-1.6.1.2
ExitFailure 1

You will need the development version of that library installed. In
Debian-alikes, the development versions of library packages have names
ending with -dev.

~d

[Alexander Genaud]

Thanks again guys. I had some trouble with cabal-install dependencies on
Mint, but would prefer stable packages anyway. Mint/Mate is now stable as
long as I'm willing to start with 'xmonad --replace &' in a terminal after
login. Xmonad from XDG/Login might be possible (with first two files below)
if I start up a session manager and a bunch of utilities (in third file); I
haven't tried. I would like to try with LXDE.


# apt-get install xmonad libghc-xmonad-contrib-dev libghc-xmonad-dev


==> /usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop <==
[Desktop Entry]
Name=XMonad
Comment=Lightweight tiling window manager
Exec=xmonad.start
Icon=xmonad.png
Type=XSession


==> /usr/share/applications/xmonad.start.desktop <==
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Xmonad
Exec=/usr/local/bin/xmonad.start
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-WMName=Xmonad
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager
X-GNOME-Provides=windowmanager
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true


==> /usr/local/bin/xmonad.start <==
#!/bin/bash
#mate-panel &
exec xmonad


==> xmonad.hs <==
import XMonad
import XMonad.Config.Desktop
main = xmonad $ desktopConfig {
modMask = mod4Mask
, terminal = "mate-terminal"
}

[Alexander Genaud]

Post by Daniel Wagner
You will need the development version of that library installed. In

Debian-alikes,

Post by Daniel Wagner
the development versions of library packages have names ending with -dev.

Yes. I posted my config on 1 March. The following installed successfully on
Mint 17.1:

# apt-get install xmonad libghc-xmonad-contrib-dev libghc-xmonad-dev