Running xmonad, xmobar and the Gnome panel

This is my personal xmonad setup for use on Ubuntu 10.10, running under VirtualBox on a Mac laptop. The inspiration for this configuration comes from xmonad layouts for netbooks.

See the xmonad tour for an overview of using xmonad. To better understand xmonad configuration, you may also want to look at the default xmonad configuration, the standard Gnome configuration and an example xmobar configuration.

This configurtion includes Gnome panel (on the top) and xmobar (on the bottom). The two docks can be toggled with M-b. This layout defines several special workspaces:

1:code is intended for editor and terminal windows. The master pane will automatically resize itself to be 80 columns wide.
2:web holds a web browser.
3:im holds the Pidgin IM client. The buddy list will be displayed in a column on the left, and individual IM windows will be layed out on a grid on the right.
8:float has primitive floating windows, and is very useful for running the Gimp.

Installing xmonad

This should give you everything you need:

sudo apt-get install xmonad libghc6-xmonad-dev libghc6-xmonad-contrib-dev \
    xmobar gnome-go pidgin git
git clone http://github.com/emk/xmonad-config.git

Set up some symlinks so xmonad and xmobar can find their configuration files:

cd
ln -s xmonad-config .xmonad
ln -s .xmonad/xmobarrc .xmobarrc

Setting up Gnome

Switch to the "Clearlooks" theme if you want the Gnome panel and xmobar to match. Adjust the background alpha of Gnome Terminal to taste, and disable its menu bar.

Disable the Nautilus desktop, or you won't see xmonad:

gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Remove the bottom Gnome panel, but leave the top one intact.

If you're running Empathy, quit it and configure Pidgin instead. Empathy is a very slick IM client, but it doesn't reliably support audio, video or file transfers. It also does some funny stuff with WM_CLASS that make it hard to control using xmonad and other window managers. Don't worry; Pidgin has full Gnome integration, including the messaging menu.

Configure Pidgin's Libnotify Popups plugin to turn off "Buddy logged in" messages.

VirtualBox Mac host notes

In VirtualBox, with a Mac host:

Move VirtualBox modifier to right Option key.
Swap left Alt and left Windows key using Gnome keyboard preferences dialog.

Put this in ~/.xmodmap:

keycode 64 = Hyper_L
clear Mod3
add Mod3 = Hyper_L
clear Mod4
add Mod4 = Super_L Super_R

This finishes remapping the modifiers so that:

Meta and Alt are mapped to the Command key.
Hyper_L is mapped to the left Option key, and used to control xmonad.
Super_R is mapped to the right Command key, and used to control Emacs.
The right Option key is used to control VirtualBox.

At this point, you'll want to log out of your Gnome session and log back in.

Starting xmonad

Start xmonad from a terminal:

xmonad &

Using xmonad

See the xmonad tour for a basic tutorial. This configuration defines several other useful keys as well. Below, M- indicates Hyper_L, our xmonad modifier key, which is mapped to the right Option key. S- indicates Super_R, which is mapped to the right Command key.