Thanks for all the suggestions. Having had great success with Gnome2-fallback in the past, I decided to try Mate out again with the latest xmonad-contrib (is that what everyone means by latest xmonad from darcs?). I started with a fresh install of Linux Mint 17.1 with Mate, updated, etc. I installed xmonad and cabal-install. I was not able to install xmonad-contrib (command line details below). Any suggestions? Additionally, I have the most basic xmonad.hs file, yet cannot re-compile (Could not find package 'XMonad'). The xmonad-contrib is not available via Mint's apt-get. Mint's xmonad.desktop file is nearly identical to the config described here: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_MATE . However, the dconf suggestion does not work. Selecting 'Xmonad' from the GUI Login displays the GHC/xmonad --recompile error again and otherwise presents a blank xmonad session. I have no terminal, probably because I cannot compile 'terminal = "mate-terminal"' in xmonad.hs. Alt-Shift-Q works: logout. Selecting 'gnome-xmonad.desktop' is equally useless (though technically working).
Sorry, but could you describe exactly what are the problems you encountered?
With XFCE, I was able to get a semi-working system from a freshly installed Xubuntu. In a vanilla XFCE session, 'xmonad --replace' from the command line seems to work. But I could not start a fresh session with Xmonad. At best, the panel would not display (although it was running) and there would be a blank/transparent tile. I removed most Mate keyboard shortcuts, yet Meta-Shift-Return only sometimes opened a terminal. I was not able to get Cinnamon to work at all -- I don't recall the specific issues. I don't recall my earlier issues with Mint/Mate, but I've described several issues above and some command line details below. # apt-get install xmonad cabal-install # xmonad --version xmonad 0.11 # cabal --version cabal-install version 1.16.0.2 using version 1.16.0 of the Cabal library # cabal install xmonad-contrib Resolving dependencies... Configuring X11-1.6.1.2... ...etc... checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h usability... no checking X11/extensions/Xinerama.h presence... no checking for X11/extensions/Xinerama.h... no WARNING: Xinerama headers not found. Building without Xinerama support checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h usability... no checking X11/extensions/Xrandr.h presence... no checking for X11/extensions/Xrandr.h... no configure: error: X11/extensions/Xrandr.h (from libXrandr) is required Failed to install X11-1.6.1.2 cabal: Error: some packages failed to install: X11-1.6.1.2 failed during the configure step. The exception was: ExitFailure 1 X11-xft-0.3.1 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install. xmonad-0.11 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install. xmonad-contrib-0.11.3 depends on X11-1.6.1.2 which failed to install. The following did not help # apt-get install xorg xinerama, libXrandr, X11-utils, etc # Xorg -version X.Org X Server 1.15.1 Release Date: 2014-04-13 $ cat xmonad.hs import XMonad main = xmonad defaultConfig { modMask = mod4Mask } $ xmonad --recompile; cat xmonad.errors xmonad.hs:1:8 Could not find module 'XMonad' ... etc ... # apt-get install dconf-cli $ dconf read /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager (nothing) $ dconf write /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager xmonad error: 0-6:unknown keyword