[xmonad] Re: background applications

On Mon, Aug 30 2010, Jim Cheetham wrote:

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Sergey Manucharian wrote:

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I'm trying to get a handle on the different "levels" that xmonad can run at: either within gnome, or instead of gnome... is that right?

Not quite; XMonad manages windows, Gnome manages "desktop sessions" and uses something else to manage windows -- in Ubuntu that's metacity.

It's quite possible to have Gnome running with XMonad as the window manager -- if you do this you can have the standard gnome-panel with menus, application icons and status applets. Mind you, there is a little confusion in idiom between a window manager that primarily uses the keyboard with a panel that primarily demands the mouse ...

The following command will change the window manager that Gnome uses :- $ gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager xmonad --type string

(set it to gnome-wm to get the old metacity back)

Thanks for all the recommendations and pointers! I think this is the solution I'll start with, at least until I'm comfortable enough with xmonad configuration to play with standalone status bars. Off to give it a shot… Eric