[xmonad] Ditching Gnome

[Ben Boeckel]

Eyal Erez <oneself at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using xmonad on top of gnome for some time now. I would really like
> to drop gnome, and use xmonad straight up. However, gnome has a number of small
> but significant features that I need to find replacements for:
> 
> Must Have:
> 1. System tray: This is where many apps I use (e.g. Pidgin, Skype, Aqualung,
>   Dropbox, etc.) place icons so I can see some status about them, and sometimes
>   interact with them (though mostly just status).

I used stalonetray for a while (I no longer have any apps which have a
system tray icon, so I don't use it anymore).

> 2. Network: This also exists in the system tray but I separated it out because
>   it's really important.  This is the ability to see if I am connected or not,
>   and to be able to choose wifi networks to connect to.

nm-applet should work with stalonetray.

> 3. gnome-do: I use this as an easy way to launch applications.  I don't use most
>   of the more complicated features like combining objects and verbs.

I use dmenu, but gmrun seems popular as well.

> Nice to Have:
> 4. High-level view of all desktops and which apps are running on each.

Not sure how to get this. GridSelect works well for me (though doesn't
show where each app is).

> 5. Date, time, and whether.
> 6. System statistics.

xmobar can do these wonderfully.

> I have tried both xmonbar and dzen2, but had a hard time getting all the
> features I needed to work.  I was hoping someone can point out what I can use to
> replace each of these, and throw in some good documentation to boot.

My configuration repository is here[1]. Look under dotfiles/base/X11.

--Ben

[1]http://git.benboeckel.net/?p=dotfiles.git;a=tree