Configure Xfce and Xmonad

This is my first "contribution" in the world GNU / Linux, I hope you find it useful. This in a small guide of how I have configured xmonad, and how to substitute xfwm4 by xmonad.

Why xmonad and xfce?

After working with xmonad for a while, I realized that it lacks “something”, in my case the themes for windows, mouse, volume,…. etc, and I don't know how to configure with haskell. So the easiest way to achieve something similar was to exchange xfwm4 for xmonad, I really liked the end result.

Installing xmonad

aptitude install ghc xmonad xmobar gmrun dmenu

Setting up xmonad

Once xmonad is installed, we move to the .xmonad folder

cd ~/.xmonad

If it does not exist we create it

mkdir ~/.xmonad

Inside the folder we create a text file called xmonad.hs, open it with our favorite text editor and paste the following code in it. (If it exists, we delete or rename it)

xmonad.hs

We compile the file with

xmonad --recompile

Now we have xmonad configured, the global keys are in the xmonad.hs file

Changing xfwm4 to xmonad

First we add xmonad to the applications autostart, in
xfce> settings> Configuration manager> Session and startup> Applications autostart> add>

name: xfce-xmonad (or whatever you want)
description: xfce-xmonad (or whatever you want)
command: xmonad

Now we end the xfwm4 process and save the session.
xfce> configuration> Configuration manager> Session and login> Session

We select xfwm4 and click on close program, then save session

Important before closing xfwm4 we open a terminal (it never hurts)

If you want to see the result (without closing the session) put in the console

xmonad&

Wait I don't like how I look!

Just remove xmonad from autostart (if you called it that), and in the terminal put

xfwm4&

Save session and ready as if something had not happened

Hope that useful.