That was an interesting read, indeed. Certainly the xmonad faithful agree that one of its greatest strengths is the power of Haskell configuration. I suspect I wouldn't want to use most of your personal xmonads, because everyone's is tuned to their machine, distro, usage and aesthetic. On one hand, PlainConfig as the standard configuration for newcomers accomplishes a lot of the simplification side. The move to having an xmonad.hs will still be a sharp change, but we're throwing new users straight into that already, so this is hardly worse. But simplifying the early configuration process and removing the GHC dependency are only part of the puzzle. The idea of getting our defaults right and providing a strong first impression is important too. The point where this is most obvious comes to mind from #xmonad support patterns: ManageDocks! Practically everybody uses them, and there is occasionally confusion about how to set it up. It could be far simpler. Granted, it will be so with PlainConfig, should be as simple as adding "avoidStatusBars = 1" or some similar syntax. But I imagine the experience of pasting configs and needing so much help from #xmonad just to do such an apparently simple and common thing isn't the best first experience. Though it does highlight the politeness and competence of #xmonad, which is a positive, it should still be easier for newcomers to manage that one, ideally on their own. If it weren't already abundantly clear from my championing of PlainConfig, I definitely support the idea of making xmonad more accessible to the new user, though of course without sacrificing the high-end flexibility we know and love. I have nightly builds of core and contrib working. I'll create a modified version of the scripts that combines them into a single bundle, that will install a complete ~/.xmonad/xmonad.conf, with every setting there, commented, and set to the default, for maximum ease of use. Then the next quick project is adding more modules (ManageDocks, EwmhDesktops, and some other favourites) into PlainConfig's repertoire. Finally the xmonad.conf -> xmonad.hs compiler is the last step toward a complete system on that front. Hopefully this doesn't seem like hijacking the thread. It's all in the vein of making xmonad the best experience possible, for new and old users. Braden Shepherdson shepheb