[xmonad] Going Gnomeless (and Unityless on Oneiric)

[Jacek Generowicz]

Greetings,

I'm returning to Linux after almost a decade away, and finally being
able to fully XMonadise my environment is a great (though
time-consuming) joy: The efficency of a finely tuned and customized,
all-encompassing XMonad setup is quite awesome. I apologize if I get
some of the current Linux terms long, in what follows.

I'm on Ubuntu Oneiric and have been running XMonad under Unity (which
seems to be partially built on Gnome?) I see a way forward for getting
rid of all Gnome or Unity features and replacing them with some
combination of XMonad, xmobar, dzen, conky etc., except for two:

- Gnome seems to do a fairly decent job of automatically detecting and
  managing wireless networks. How would I go about this without
  Gnome's assistance? Is there something that can be plugged into
  XMonad which will show me available networks, and allow me to
  choose, connect and disconnect (preferably without having to touch
  the mouse, but also without having to type magic incantations
  involving wpa_supplicant, iwconfig etc.) ?

- What's the quickest way of accessing system settings. I've been
  trying to run without the unity panel and launcher, but I've had to
  respawn them just to get access to system setting.

Thank you.