[xmonad] Gnome3 and xmonad

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 19 May 2011 14:07:22 +0900 Jens Petersen <juhp at community.haskell.org> wrote: 

>> After playing with Gnome 3 for a bit, I've decided to simply stop using
>> Gnome and use XFCE instead.  Thanks for the help but Gnome 3 really gets
>> in the way of using XMonad effectively, so I won't bother (and I'll save
>> myself quite a bit of memory and CPU as well).

JP> Were you using Gnome 2 before?  Gnome 3 fallback seems pretty
JP> similar to Gnome 2 - so just curious if you see any new
JP> issues with using xmonad in Gnome 3's fallback mode?

I didn't need fallback in Gnome 2.  I can't force fallback in Gnome 3,
it still doesn't use gnome-panel.

The best way I found so far (as suggested here) is:

% cat /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/xmonad.session 
[GNOME Session]
Name=Xmonad
Required=windowmanager;panel;filemanager;
Required-windowmanager=xmonad
Required-panel=gnome-panel
Required-filemanager=nautilus
DefaultApps=gnome-settings-daemon;

#RequiredComponents=gnome-shell;gnome-settings-daemon;
RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;
IsRunnableHelper=/usr/lib/gnome-session/gnome-session-check-accelerated
FallbackSession=gnome-fallback

% cat ~/.xsession
#!/bin/sh

gnome-session --session=xmonad

...and then use the "custom X" GDM session.  This uses Gnome 2
components, I believe.

Incidentally, XFCE works OK but wasn't any better than Gnome 2.  So
since I'm used to Gnome 2 I'm using the solution above for now.  

I certainly wish I could use the Gnome 3 components but they've made
third-party window managers a really difficult option.  Very frustrating
since I've always been a Gnome supporter and have been using custom
window managers since 1995 (ctwm was my first one; I've also used
Enlightenment, CDE, Ion 2 and 3, wmii, and StumpWM[1] before finding
XMonad).

Ted

[1] it was hard to give up StumpWM's Lisp configuration for Haskell
because I am very comfortable with Lisp, but Haskell has its charms