Configuring XMonad

I have been setting up XMonad on my Debian box, partially because I am kinda hooked on Haskell right now, and so far it has been a prety fun adventure. Just wish to share some thoughts here.

Getting XMonad

Being on Debian has its perks, a aptitude install xmonad simply works, else just head to XMonad to get the suitable package.

Running XMonad

I’m using startx to run XMonad, so all I have to do is to edit ~/.xinitrc, and add the line

exec xmonad

If you’re using a display manager such as KDM, GDM, slim, lightdm etc, there’s probably a way to select which which session you want to run, or you can edit your ~/.xsession file. You can probably get more information here.

Configuring XMonad

This is the really fun part. I’ve tried finding good configurations I can immediately copy and use, and actually found this, but when it comes to configuring your window manager, everyone is heavily opiniated. After spending some time on it, I found that the best way to configure XMonad is to do it in small steps.

I think the most efficient way to figure things out is to learn the defaults first, by looking at the tour from the official pages. This will give you a feel of how to do things. The most important takeaway is: - Mod + Shift + Enter fires up a terminal, and by default Mod is Left-Alt - Mod-Q restarts xmonad, this allows you to see changes you have made to the config file quickly - ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs is the default configuration file

Then move on to the actual configuration, and a gentleman has wrote a extremely easy to follow step-wise [guide](www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive/John_Goerzen’s_Configuration) on configuring XMonad. Follow this guide to the end, and you should have a simple yet efficient XMonad up and running.

Caveats

I faced one small issue, which was the loading of xmobar configuration file. Particularly the line

xmproc <- spawnPipe "xmobar /home/ngzhian/.xmonad/.xmobarrc"

For some reason xmobar didn’t manage to load the file that I passed in. I solved it by not passing in a filename, and just creating the config file at the default location, which is ~/.xmobarrc. So that line simply became

xmproc <- spawnPipe "xmobar"

I’ll write about xmobar soon, it’s fun to configure it as well, but for now here’s what I have

-- /home/ngzhian/.xmonad/xmonad.sh
import XMonad
import XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog
import XMonad.Hooks.ManageDocks
import XMonad.Util.Run(spawnPipe)
import XMonad.Util.EZConfig(additionalKeys)
import System.IO

main = do
  xmproc <- spawnPipe "xmobar"
  xmonad $ defaultConfig
    { manageHook = manageDocks <+> myManageHook <+> manageHook defaultConfig
    , layoutHook = avoidStruts  $  layoutHook defaultConfig
    , logHook    = dynamicLogWithPP xmobarPP
                       { ppOutput = hPutStrLn xmproc
                       , ppTitle  = xmobarColor "#021030" "" . shorten 100
                       }
    , modMask = mod4Mask    -- Rebind Mod to Windows key
    , terminal = myTerminal -- set terminal
    } `additionalKeys`
    [ ((mod4Mask .|. shiftMask,    xK_l),     spawn "xscreensaver-command -lock")
    , ((controlMask,               xK_Print), spawn "sleep 0.2; scrot -s")
    , ((0,                         xK_Print), spawn "scrot")
    ]

-- Preferred terminal
myTerminal = "/usr/bin/urxvt"

-- Managing hooks when windows are created
myManageHook = composeAll
  [ className =? "Gimp" --> doFloat
  ]