XMonad hits a sweet spot no other window manager does for me:<p><pre><code> import XMonad.Config.Mate
main = xmonad mateConfig
</code></pre>
and just like that I have XMonad running inside my mate desktop, without the need to manually configure a status bar for volume, wifi, keyboard input language, clock, etc.<p>I don't even use tiling that much as I prefer to have one app per workspace, but just having focus-follows-mouse and the option to tile if I need it is really sweet.
Jekor's videos on the XMonad source code really helped me get into Haskell: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63MpfyZUcrU&index=3&list=PLxj9UAX4Em-IBXkvcC3MycLlcxyoi7v8B" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63MpfyZUcrU&index=3&list=PLx...</a>
My favorite part of XMonad is XMonad.Actions.Navigation2D[0], which allows you you use direction navigation via keybinding to switch between windows. A proof that the technique for this allows you to visit any window, no matter how they are arranged is given in this paper[1].<p>[0]- <a href="http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Actions-Navigation2D.html" rel="nofollow">http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Actions-...</a><p>[1]- <a href="https://web.cs.dal.ca/~nzeh/xmonad/Navigation2D.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://web.cs.dal.ca/~nzeh/xmonad/Navigation2D.pdf</a>
Unfortunately, with Wayland growing, XMonad may no longer be possible[1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/38" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/38</a>
In the past I have tried various tiling window managers but always reverted back to xmonad. I haven't looked elsewhere for some time now.<p>Documentation is extraordinary and really easy to follow once I understood how to read it, years ago.<p>The only sore spot is monstrous GHC size, that compiler needs to get much smaller to be really good from all angles.
An additional joke, likely unintentional (but who knows), is that the original Monads of Leibniz, were viewed as completely independent, 'windowless', objects that only seemed to interact with one another via God's elaborate choreography, which he termed the 'pre-established harmony' of the universe.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony</a><p>XMonad of course, has windows.<p>And now for an actually funny joke about Leibniz:<p><a href="http://existentialcomics.com/comic/108" rel="nofollow">http://existentialcomics.com/comic/108</a>
I'm glad to see a new release of XMonad! Two questions:<p>1. Is there any way to use XMonad but keep the standard Ubuntu menu bar for access to desktop menus? This used to be possible with older Gnome desktops, but it had gotten increasingly harder in recent years.<p>2. Does XMonad work well on Retina/HiDPI displays? A year or two ago, it still had lots of rough edges.
I'm a heavy user of Amethyst, the Xmonad-inspired tiling for OSX/MacOS (<a href="https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst</a>) on my laptops.<p>And are disappointed when using my Ubuntu desktop of the lack of simple tiling inside Unity. In my ancient fvwm and kde days there were more options.<p>I don't want to change my whole windows manager to Xmonad or i3, as I try to keep my setups fairly vanilla (as I use a lot of different machines/VMs and need a quick setup), but adding an unintrusive simple tiling option would be nice.<p>I have tried X Tile which is ok, but crashes too often and also moves full screened windows from my 2nd monitor onto my main monitor which is annoying.
I used XMonad for many, many years. During these years it served me well and I really loved it. However I switched to AwesomeWM about 2 years ago and couldn't be happier. I was able to easily make Awesome behave just like xmonad for parts I cared about, so the transition was pretty painless.
Top 3 reasons I switched:
1. Multi monitor support is far better with awesome and it worked perfectly out of the box with my 3 displays.
2. Programs that were a bit glitchy under xmonad had no such glitches under awesome.
3. LUA configuration files make it far easier for me to customize behavior and extended it. With Xmonad's Haskell I always felt like a noob.
Hallelujah the [1]missing dropdowns are fixed!<p>Long live the best WM ever!<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/42" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/42</a>
There is a (recent) video from Ethan Schoonover demonstrating his config.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IxjLEmomg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IxjLEmomg</a>
XMonad is moving really fast. It was on 0.11 for quiet sometime and now it it 0.13.
Love/Miss XMonad, since I use mac work. One of the reason s I want to get a Linux machine for personal use.
I've been thinking of trying XMonad for a while, and looks like this is the opportune time. Anyone know if there's an easy "switch to last used window" functionality?