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xmonad – The tiling window manager
In 2009 I was in search for a new window manager for my netbook. It has a 10-inch screen, and the window manager (WM) of choice had to use that screen space efficiently and it should be easy to use.
After looking at other tiling window managers I found out about xmonad and felt in love with it :-) . Since 2011 it is my default WM on Arch Linux, Debian Linux and FreeBSD.
In my xmonad configuration, I've kept the eye candy to a minimum, but use a lot of extensions from xmonad-contrib that improve the handling. Please be aware that nearly all functions of xmonad are controlled by keyboard shortcuts.
Configuration file:
view xmonad.hs (with syntax highlighting)
download xmonad.hs as plain text
Dependencies:
- xmonad >=0.10
- xmonad-contrib >=0.10
- xmobar
- dmenu
- trayer (for system tray support)
- and of course some version of GHC, the glasgow haskell compiler
Screenshots
This is my desktop: Gvim is maximized on the left screen with some terminals behind. The right screen shows a web browser and the git tree view.
Gimp with floating windows:
Another Desktop screen:
Keyboard Shortcuts
These shortcuts are missing in the above graphics:
| Mod + Ctrl + 1…= | Copy focused window to workspace 1…B |
| Mod + Ctrl + B | unmark window as boring |
| Mod + Ctrl + J | Goto next window, including boring ones |
| Mod + Ctrl + K | Goto previous window, including boring ones |
| Mod + Del | runs xkill to kill a window interactively |
| Mod + Shift + Del | kill focused window |
| Mod + Ctrl + Del | kill focused window (using xkill -id) |
Usage notes
Workspaces
Workspaces are selected by the keys in row starting with the 1-key and ending in the equal-key (=). The workspaces are named from 1 to 9, then 0, A (minus-key), B (equal-key).
Mod + one of the workspace-keys displays that workspace on your physical screen.
Mod + Shift + workspace-key moves the currently focused window to the selected workspace.
Mod + Control + workspace-key copies the currently focused window to the selected workspace. This is like the "sticky" or "show on all workspaces" feature found in other window managers.
Boring Windows
You can mark the currently focused window as boring by typing Mod + B.
Windows marked as boring are skipped when cycling through the windows (Mod + Tab; Mod + J; Mod + K). You can focus a boring window with Mod + Control + J or Mod + Control + K and unmark it as being boring with Mod + Control + B.
xkill
Killing windows with xkill is not recommended as it may leave zombie processes behind.
Please take special note of these two paragraphs from the xkill manpage:
This program is very dangerous, but is useful for aborting programs that have displayed undesired windows on a user's screen.
[…]
This command does not provide any warranty that the application whose connection to the X server is closed will abort nicely, or even abort at all. All this command does is to close the connection to the X server. Many existing applications do indeed abort when their connec‐ tion to the X server is closed, but some can choose to continue.
Page last modified 2012-12-17 19:02.
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