/gnome-session-xmonad

Ubuntu package for Gnome + XMonad session files

Primary LanguageShellGNU General Public License v2.0GPL-2.0

gnome-session-xmonad

This Ubuntu package contains session files for Gnome + XMonad. The latest xmonad package in Debian/Ubuntu no longer has working session files, so I'm maintaining them in this repository. The sessions are simply copies of metacity-based sessions from gnome-session-flashback/gnome-session-fallback packages with metacity replaced with xmonad.

Replacing metacity with xmonad seems to keep everything happy, and based on my testing everything including volume keys works fine.

For ready-to-use binary packages, see my PPA here, or check out the quick installation guide below:

https://launchpad.net/~gekkio/+archive/ubuntu/xmonad

Update 12/2022: I've switched to Pop!_OS and its tiling window manager, and have no plans to update this repository/package anymore!

So long, and thanks for all the fish :)

If you need this functionality, you can make the necessary files yourself. At the time of writing this (12/2022), the necessary steps are:

  1. Install gnome-session-flashback package so you get the necessary configuration files for metacity (the old gnome window manager)

  2. Make copies of all relevant metacity-based session configuration files and replace metacity with xmonad in them. This includes at least the following files:

    • /usr/libexec/gnome-flashback-metacity
    • /usr/lib/systemd/user/gnome-session@gnome-flashback-metacity.target.d/session.conf
    • /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/gnome-flashback-metacity.session
    • /usr/share/xsessions/gnome-flashback-metacity.desktop

  3. For most Ubuntu releases this has been enough. If the session still doesn't work, you might need to update some common configuration file too instead of just adding new files. For example, see this commit for a fix that was necessary for Ubuntu Xenial. I can't predict what problems future Ubuntu versions will have, but it might be something similar.

Quick installation

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gekkio/xmonad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-xmonad

This installs the GNOME + XMonad session, which can be selected from the login screen. Make sure you select the right one, because the list probably has other xmonad sessions as well.

These xmonad sessions are unrelated to this package, and are not guaranteed to work:

  • GNOME Flashback (Xmonad)
  • XMonad

Your xmonad configuration must have the necessary gnome hooks in place. In practice things work perfectly if you are using gnomeConfig properly in your configuration, as documented on Hackage.

Minimal installation (doesn't install GHC)

Like the Quick Installation above, except we avoid bringing in Ubuntu's GHC ecosystem:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gekkio/xmonad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-session-xmonad

To be able to compile your ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs, you'll probably also want to install the X11 packages specified in the Xmonad README:

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxinerama-dev libxext-dev libxft-dev libxrandr-dev libxss-dev

This minimal installation assumes you already have GHC installed by some non-Apt means, e.g. via Stack or a http://haskell.org/ghc tarball.

Manual installation (doesn't require packaging this repo)

Install with the ./minimal-install.sh and uninstall with the ./minimal-uninstall.sh. These assume you're managing your own GHC installation separately.

Configuing Gnome autostart applications

The ./session.conf defines various things, mostly gnome-panel tray indicators, that we want to autostart, but there are also default things that Gnome is globally configured to start. For example, the indicator-messages-service, which is started in ./session.conf, is also started globally by Gnome by default, via /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-messages.desktop in the global autostarts dir /etc/xdg/autostart (the global autostart dirs can be found in man gnome-session in the "FILES" section).

To disable one of these global autostarts, copy the corresponding .desktop file (e.g. indicator-messages.desktop) into ~/.config/autostart, and then add a Hidden=true line; the ~/.config/autostart is for configuring user specific autostarts. Note that this won't work if the autostart is also mentioned in ./session.conf, so in this example we also needto comment out Wants=indicator-messages-service in ./session.conf.

Supported Ubuntu versions

These Ubuntu versions are supported at the moment:

  • 18.04 Bionic (LTS)
  • 20.04 Focal (LTS)
  • 21.10 Impish
  • 22.04 Jammy (LTS)