[xmonad] New User - Intro

[Don Stewart]

Kevin:
> XMonad Fans,
  
> I came across XMonad yesterday, and I think I'm hooked.

Welcome!
  
> I've been using XFCE for quite a while.  But, I usually kill the XFCE 
> panel, start an XFCE-terminal session, maximize it, then launch 
> applications, most of which I also maximize, from there.  Recently someone 
> posted to the Debian mailing list asking for window manager suggestions on 
> maximizing screen real estate.  I replied detailing my XFCE habits.  I 
> then received a few replies asking why I was using XFCE, and got some 
> suggestions of other window managers I might try that would be more to my 
> liking.

You might be interested to see the XFCE support xmonad has. It can be
a nice intermediate step between a full desktop environment based on
overlapping windows, and the tiling paradigm:

    http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XFCE

(There' similar support for gnome and kde).
  
> Most of the suggestions were for tabbed/tiling window managers, such as 
> Ion, etc.  I had looked briefly at similar window managers in the past and 
> didn't think I'd like them because I prefer to run most apps full screen. 

Ah, then you'll be happy with xmonad. fullscreen for all clients is a
builtin layout.

> After taking a closer look at some of the suggested window managers I 
> discovered some of them had a full screen mode with minimal or no window 
> decorations, and could be used almost entirely from the keyboard which is 
> just what I've been looking for all along.  After trying a few I had just 
> about settled on Ion.  Then ...
> 
> Yesterday while surfing the net to make sure I hadn't overlooked any 
> possibilities I came across info on XMonad.  I'm currently running Debian 
> Lenny but the only Debian XMonad package I could find was for Sid.  I 
> dropped the Sid package into my local repository and was able to install 
> and run it successfully.  I hit a snag when I started trying to tweak the 
> configuration.  After a little trial and error I discovered I had to 
> install Haskell and a few Haskell libraries, also from Sid.  But after 
> doing so I was able to start customizing XMonad and so far all is working 
> well.
> 
> Sorry for rambling on so much.  Bottom line - my congratulations and many 
> thanks to the XMonad developers for such a well designed window manager.

Great, hope you enjoy the ride!

-- Don