Comments on: SIMPLE LINUX, UBUNTU, LINUS & COMPIZ

By: David

David — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:23:57 +0000

Whoa, I had some embedded characters in my comment that your blog software did not like. Let me try again. Just put the following in your .gnomerc file:
export WINDOW_MANAGER=”path-to-your-xmonad-executable”

By: David

David — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:20:58 +0000

Alec, you heard right. You can use xmonad as a window manager under Gnome. Just put the following in your .gnomerc file:
export WINDOW_MANAGER=”"

It works really well.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:38:39 +0000

for those keeping score at home, winkey is mod4Mask (mod2Mask == numlock)

By: acosta

acosta — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:56:40 +0000

i'll take the liberty of reposting your xmonad rc correctly ...

import Graphics.X11.Xlib

import XMonad
import XMonad.Layouts

import XMonad.Layout.NoBorders
import XMonad.Layout.Tabbed

layout = my_tabbed ||| my_tiled
  where
     my_tiled   = Mirror $ Tall nmaster delta ratio
     nmaster = 1
     ratio   = 1/2
     delta   = 3/100

     my_tabbed = noBorders (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf)


main = xmonad $ defaultConfig
    { defaultGaps = [(18,0,0,0)]
    , terminal = "urxvtc"
    , modMask = mod3Mask
    , layoutHook = layout
    }

By: acosta

acosta — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:55:14 +0000

haha awesome, totally works. they are (exploding with some spaces) < pre > and < / pre >

By: acosta

acosta — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:54:46 +0000

alrighty … i’ll take that all into considerations. for future reference, vdov has the

and

(hopefully these actually show up) tags for preserving whitespace, though i don’t know about using them in comments. we’re probably about to find out when i click ’submit comment’ …

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:55:19 +0000

I hear you can also use xmonad as GNOME’s window manager, so you can keep the ubuntu fluff and still have a smart window manager

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:54:51 +0000

yup, vdov butchered the whitespace

xmonad will automatically float some things, and it’s easy to configure it to float your preferred application. I don’t remember ion3 doing that, but I stopped using it a long time ago.

xmonad is also so much easier to configure. I know Lua decently well and couldn’t figure out the ion3 configuration stuff for the life of me. I know Haskell better than Lua, but that doesn’t explain the orders of magnitude easier configuration.

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:52:29 +0000

My ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs configuration file is pretty simple – I have the mod key bound to left alt (requires some xkb/xmodmap trickery), but use mod2Mask to get the Windows key. I have a custom status bar with time/load/IP using dzen up at the top, and I only use two modes: tabbed (full screen with tabs for title names, like ion3) and tiled with a horizontal split. On the widescreen monitor I use a vertical split.

I’m cool and run the xmonad dev version; I don’t believe this config will work with 0.4.

I’m sure vdov is going to butcher this:

$ cat ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs
import Graphics.X11.Xlib

import XMonad
import XMonad.Layouts

import XMonad.Layout.NoBorders
import XMonad.Layout.Tabbed

layout = my_tabbed ||| my_tiled
where
my_tiled = Mirror $ Tall nmaster delta ratio
nmaster = 1
ratio = 1/2
delta = 3/100

my_tabbed = noBorders (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf)

main = xmonad $ defaultConfig
{ defaultGaps = [(18,0,0,0)]
, terminal = “urxvtc”
, modMask = mod3Mask
, layoutHook = layout
}

By: jrgreen

jrgreen — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:03:35 +0000

Thanks Alec, re: unison and xmonad. xmonad is an improvement on ion3 for my purposes. I’m a convert.

First order of business: make mod the winkey. Anyone done this yet?

What’s with the tiling WMs being written in obscure (to me) languages like Lua and Haskell?

By: acosta

acosta — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:42:32 +0000

3 part comments … awesome. interesting re: xmonad … i will have to give that a look today.

“Ubuntu’s update cycle is too fast to include it” … haha.

i’m not exactly sure what their definition of tactile feedback is, but i’m pretty sure mine doesn’t include things without feedback.

you could easily float and unfloat windows at a keypress in ion3 as well … what’s different there? i suppose i’ll find out …

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:21:49 +0000

The other cool thing about xmonad I forgot to mention is that it realizes that not all applications play well with window management and makes them usable. mplayer doesn’t pop up in some oddly-sized window, and you can float and unfloat windows at a keypress.

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:20:26 +0000

I was at FOSSCamp a few weeks ago – Canonical’s attempt at an unconference – and some guys were showing off Compiz or one of the other 3D bling. Their sales pitch was that it was actually useful in that it gave tactile feedback to moving windows around. Apparently windows schooching across the screen is now considered usable; who’d have thought?

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:17:19 +0000

I switched from ion3 to xmonad early this year and haven’t looked back – it’s a great window manager that gets out of your way and lets you use your windows.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu’s update cycle is too fast to include it, but it’s in Debian, and a new version was recently released.