Well, I just realized that since I only need this for learning purposes (not production code) I may as well do it under linux. I have my linux box on a kvm with the mac. (That's my current form of "virtualization" ;-) I'll do this if ubuntu and HP work well together. Thoughts?
That's where I've ended up for my xmonad development (well, still setting it up), since xmonad is crashing when I use a ghc that is built against MacPorts (both MP's own GHC and a locally built up to date haskell-platform) which I need for X11-xft :/