
Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager - dons
http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/xmonad-0-9-available-now/
======
jsrn
I've used Xmonad for a few weeks now and it is simply great: "screen real
estate" is never wasted, you get free brain cycles by never doing the nitty-
gritty details of window arrangement manually again - you switch high level
"layout algorithms" instead that arrange your windows differently.

Are you (like me) an Emacs user? You want to remap the Xmonad modifier-key
(default is on left Alt a.k.a. Meta). Here is my solution:

    
    
        xmodmap -e "clear Mod3"
        xmodmap -e "clear Lock"
        xmodmap -e "add Mod3 = Caps_Lock"
        xmonad
    

taken from my ~/.xsession file - this remaps the "Caps Lock" key as a "Mod3
key".

My ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs looks like this:

    
    
        import XMonad
    
        main = xmonad defaultConfig {
                 modMask = mod3Mask
               , terminal = "xterm"
        }
    

Now I can use Caps Lock as Xmonad modifier key and Ctrl/Meta as I'm used to
for Emacs (note that I have a PC 102 keyboard - if you have a keyboard with
"Windows"-key you might use this key as modifier key instead and perhaps remap
Caps Lock as your Control key...).

~~~
buugs
I have a laptop with no windows key and am forced to use stumpwm because of
the awkward positioning I have to use if it were bound to caps lock as alt is
needed for emacs

stumpwm isn't bad though just xmonad is really nice when you have a decent
modifier key available.

------
lupin_sansei
Did you know that Windows 1.0 was a tiling window "manager"? Windows couldn't
overlap for fear that Apple might sue Microsoft over the look and feel:
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/winhistorydesktop.mspx>

~~~
thenduks
It should be pointed out, however, that while Windows 1.0 might have been a
tiling WM it doesn't come even vaguely close to the depth of features and
attention to detail put into xmonad (and some of it's competitors).

------
dylanz
If you use tiled window managers, and haven't used Xmonad before, I highly
recommend it. It's very lightweight, fast, non-buggy, and has a perfect (for
me at least) little feature set.

~~~
clicks
Many kudos to dons for creating an awesome twm, but I don't think it's a good
investment of time for the HN userbase (i.e., the young start-ups who just
want to get their thing working and up, whatever be that 'thing'). Xmonad is
hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with
gnome and have everything Just Work.

But, that's just my opinion.

~~~
laddy
They have lots of example configurations you can just copy. I agree that at
first it seems like it's going to be a huge hassle to setup but it's really
not that bad after you've done it once.

Personally I find I get increased productivity out of not constantly fiddling
with window placement.

~~~
thingie
Even the default config is reasonable and instantly usable, so this complaint
really isn't very valid. You really can just install either distribution or
cabal package, run it, and get the work done.

On the other hand, there are things, that really aren't going to work just out
of the box and are hard to configure. Xmonad has quite a different behaviour
than Gnome, and sometimes different from what usual desktop app expect. It
might be necessary to create a specific settings for a single application,
sometimes. But that's what makes it beneficial. If it were just another bad
copy of metacity or kwin-like window manager, without adequate support of EWMH
and stuff like it, which is the case of many and many X11 WMs, then it would
be really worthless.

~~~
jrockway
I agree here. I set up a new machine the other day and had the default xmonad
config for a while. It works fine; it is not significantly different from my
super-custom configuration. It was certainly better than a window manager
where you have to drag things around to see all your windows.

------
carterschonwald
xmonad is pretty cool, it uses quickcheck for (almost) exhaustive testing of
every basic element of the manager, and as I understand it the process of
programming new tiling layouts etc is pretty easy.

~~~
mark_h
There's a couple of great articles by dons on the innards as well (good
explanation of how the zipper data structure simplifies things):
<http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/01>
<http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/17>

(also <http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/06/02> )

------
old-gregg
I'm looking at it from a distance, trying to find some free time to play. A
couple of questions:

1\. They mention "Gnome compatibility" and "KDE compatibility" on their page.
Why? I thought this window manager is supposed to be used instead of
gnome/KDE, no?

2\. On some screenshots you can clearly see overlapping windows, i.e. not all
of them are always tiled?

Thanks!

~~~
gwern
> 1\. They mention "Gnome compatibility" and "KDE compatibility" on their
> page. Why? I thought this window manager is supposed to be used instead of
> gnome/KDE, no?

You _can_ do that if you want to, and most choose to. But there's good reason
to not to:

I, for example, prefer not to spend a couple hours setting up dzen or xmobar
in all their multifarious complexity & ability, getting the features right,
setting up the colors to match my current GTK theme, etc. when I could just
continue to use Gnome status-bar. (Gnome may have its issues, but I have no
problem with the status bar.) Not to mention that running inside a Gnome
session means you get a decent window manager, but also you get all the stuff
Gnome usually does like printer support or device management. You _could_
figure out how to do that independent of Gnome, but I don't consider that a
good use of time.

> 2\. On some screenshots you can clearly see overlapping windows, i.e. not
> all of them are always tiled?

You mean the floating layer? Windows are either tiled, or floating; floating
is for things like Firefox dialogues which don't make sense to push into the
tiled arrangement.

------
tsally
For the Lispers out there, I encourage you to try out StumpWM. It's tiling
like Xmonad and written in Common Lisp.

Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpwm>

Video: <http://www.vimeo.com/1088321>

~~~
buugs
It is actually more tiling like ratpoison/screen/emacs than xmonad.

------
gurraman
Xmonad is awesome. I run it (with urxvtd) inside X11.app as a terminal/iterm +
tmux/screen replacement.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's one of the reasons I'm switching back to Linux (from OS X) with my next
computer purchase. Xmonad controlling my X-apps and the native OS X window
manager controlling everything else is just unpleasant.

~~~
gurraman
Yes, I'd totally do that (at-least use my Linux partition) if a) the
experience of running Linux on a MacBook was a little smoother (I've just
bought a new one and I kind of like Apples hardware) and b) I wasn't dependent
on PhotoShop et al.

My current setup works good enough for now though; I'm pretty much working in
"modes"; stay pretty focused on isolated tasks (either designing stuff in
PhotoShop and Illustrator, watching a movie or coding in vim and running tests
in a terminal .. alas, I have to switch to a browser to check stuff every once
in a while).

EDIT: Added a quotation mark.

~~~
jrockway
It's possible to run Windows Photoshop on Linux with VMWare Workstation. I
assume.

~~~
gurraman
It is indeed possible. But _that_ is a very unpleasant experience :)

~~~
jrockway
Really? I do all my work at work through VMWare to a Linux image. I honestly
wouldn't know that I'm not sitting at a Linux box save for the little border
at the top of the VMWare console. Performance is the same.

I hear when you go the other way, Windows windows appear as windows on your
Linux desktop. Sounds cool.

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mseebach
Apparently the Xmonad paradigm also works on physical desktops (re the photo
in the post) ...

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einstein
this is now my default window manager :]

