XMonad, You're Simply The Best!

[@rainermathey6943]

Hey Derek, what is your way to install your Xmonad-Desktop ??? ... is it like install as a package under an other WM, or do you install it on an clean base Arch-Installation >>> can you please tell me how you do this ??? Many thanxxx in advance.

[@DistroTube]

Now you can't "install" my configs. You need to install the programs needed, mainly: xmonad, xmonad-contrib, xmobar. Then go to my dotfiles. Git clone the dotfiles repo and get these directories: HOME/.xmonad HOME/.config/xmobar My config expects alacritty and dmenu to be installed. If you use another terminal, edit the myTerminal variable in my xmonad.hs and recompile Xmonad (xmonad --recompile). My configs expect certain fonts to be installed too. UbuntuMono Nerd Font, SauceCodePro Nerd Font, Awesome Fonts (for xmobar icons). You'll have to install some stuff.

[@bosmanka]

@@DistroTube It would be a nice touch to have a list of most programs your keybindings expect to be on the system. It would make using your configs so much easier. So, please,if you have the time...

[@rainermathey6943]

... can you please give me the git clone commands 🤔

[@peterfarr9591]

@@rainermathey6943 git clone . I’m not trying to be rude here, but you can google for this. It’s one of the most basic things you can possibly do with git

[@DistroTube]

@Dick Bosman > It would be a nice touch to have a list of most programs your keybindings expect to be on the system. There is a nice list of programs that my keybindings use. It's in a file called xmonad.hs. Go to the section where I've put my keybindings. There really isn't a need to retype a second document just for this information.

[@mikoajpopieluch5719]

Hands down, best Tina Turner cover I have ever heard!

[@DistroTube]

Since some have asked for an option to simply use xwallpaper to set the wallpaper, my xmonad config and my sxiv key-handler now include options for both xwallpaper and feh.

[@drishalballaney6590]

hey DT how did you change the splash screen for emacs?

[@noahg.6815]

Hey DT, have you ever checked out GoboLinux? Apparently they cleaned up the Linux filesystem so that, say, GCC 8.1.0 would be found in `/Programs/GCC/8.1.0`.

[@DistroTube]

@@drishalballaney6590 It's an emacs plugin called dashboard. I showcased it a bit on a live stream a couple weeks back--the Create Your Own Emacs stream I think.

[@drishalballaney6590]

@@DistroTube thank you! (I ended up missing the live stream as it was late in the night for me :)

[@geegoo]

XMonad-san: Ugh fine, I guess you are my little pogchamp

[@carlozanotto8307]

Why should I have to change my mind when you're going to do it by yourself in a couple of months? :)

[@PurpleSanz]

If you close your eyes, somehow he sounds like Goofy sometimes.

[@sepi4]

awesome wm is the best :)

[@rbtmdl]

Hey DT! There's a new Slackware, finally. Will you do an installation, review for it?

[@besnikrrustemi]

Hey DT, it's been a while since Spectrwm got an update and some love, looking forward for some more advanced ricing update on it. Excellent videos like always !

[@stephenwilson0386]

Hey DT, I'm very much looking forward to your deployment script! I installed the i3 version of Endeavour recently, in large part due to your tiling WM videos and I'm REALLY enjoying the switch from a full DE. I enjoy i3 but I'm thinking I'll enjoy a dynamic tiler like XMonad even more, just don't have the patience/skill to configure it from scratch myself. Keep up the great work, love your channel!

[@marioschroers7318]

I still shy away from Xmonad due to its Haskell dependencies. Still in love with Qtile though. Bottom line: You don't go wrong with either one.

[@wp6007]

Use Nix

[@Varian-Killbot]

I definitely agree. There's certainly some cool things in xmonad that I'm not sure how to reproduce, but I can do just about everything I want to in qtile as it is. I'll probably just backport things that I can figure out to my config.

[@taidee]

I love Qtile through and through, worked with Xmonad and just find Qtile more favourable and less complex in terms of configuration.

[@Andrath]

"I want to decrease dependencies" ....installs xmonad and 200+ haskell packages. seriously though, xmonad *is* nice, but that made me laugh out hard.

[@camaradamanuel5025]

Dwm is still the best twm because it's infinitely modifiable because the only thing you need is the dwm source, X and nothing else. Change my mind!

[@StrikerEureka85]

This message is approved by the Church of Xmonad.

[@stm3252]

I have used bspwm,spectrwm, qtile and xmonad, but for me nothing can beat Awesomewm!

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

Maybe I´m some kind of "special case" or something. But I can´t understand the thing with tiling WM´s. But here´s the "special" part. (I use FVWM) and I am very picky about window placement and autostart some xterms with a nice placement on my first workspace. Actually rather OCD if I´m honest. So why can´t I stand any tiling WM´s? Am I the only one not wanting tiling WM´s but at the same time actually doing it manually? Hmm... Maybe it´s that automatic stuff they do with your windows I don´t like.

[@fizihkull]

Wow, great vid. That tabbed layout thing is pretty sweet! I'm currently reviving my old xmonad config and this gives me a lot of great ideas! Thank you, DistroTube! Subbed.

[@Light-.-Yagami]

Such a Headache to setup xmonad from scratch. But I admit it has best features

[@tokiomutex4148]

You should've learned Haskell first

[@bullpup1337]

@@tokiomutex4148dont forget to learn fundamentals in category theory, first. Of course after taking at least undergraduate maths classes.

[@deliriumcode]

Can't wait for that deployment script!

[@almosthelpless9374]

XMonad is great if you don't want your window manager to make assumptions about layout, but there's definitely a learning curve.

[@danbuffington75]

A minimal wm with 2.5gb of installed dependencies. Haskell is a beast.

[@vnm_8945]

having Ubuntu I'm like: "wtf is going on?"...

[@tostoday]

Actually one of my ex girlfriends was the best.

[@DistroTube]

Yea, she was great! :D

[@MrGLum32]

After dabbling in xmonad, qtile, dwm, qtile, openbox, and i3, I just find myself to keep returning to BSPWM. They're all excellent though. DEs are bloat.

[@nonetrix3066]

Xmonad is really nice but couldn't use it the Haskell syntax is crazy I wish it wasn't in Haskell I am currently using DWM works well not very customizable but does what I need out of the box mostly

[@jdecicco91]

i3wm seems to get the job done for me. Not sure I could switch to a wm that only allows pre-set layouts vs. being more flexible, but it definitely seems to work for people. Maybe one of these days...

[@nekoill]

You can't even imagine how flexible XMonad is actually, and there's a great community around it (and Haskell in general) with tons of fairly accessible guides to doing stuff. I did steal Derek's build of XMonad, but I also cut some things off, but more importantly - added other functionality myself, and it went really smoothly. Also, there's a lot of layouts, I can't even imagine why there's so many, but they're there. Also also, you actually have fairly good control over layouts, like adding more master windows, adding more windows overall, expanding and collapsing windows both vertically and horizontally, it's good stuff. I'd suggest you just give it a try, I can provide a link to my XMonad build repo so you can just download it, compile it and be ready to go. One discrepancy though: if you're on Arch or an Arch-based distro, you really wanna install stack to manage your Haskell projects, because apparently Arch has an issue with Haskell packages, but there's a neat guide for this, too, I also have a link for that if you're interested.

[@edbeckerich3737]

I compiled Emacs 27.2 the old fashioned way, ./configure, make && sudo make install. Then did git clone of Doom Emacs. Linux is addictive, way too much fun

[@YoutubeChannel-gg3hf]

Hey DT. How do i get my conky to look like urs?

[@burritocodes]

Derek, You've gotten me into XMonad, and for that I thank you. I do have a question for you. I've seen this in a few of your videos and it's the center screen display of which workspace you've switched to. How are you accomplishing that heads up display? I've looked through your configs, and haven't seen anything that sticks out, and I have spent months searching the web with no luck.

[@oxigenhalogen337]

Watched this while installing Windows 10

[@alexzander__6334]

what is your conky config file?

[@ravipratapmishra7013]

Please make a video of just installing xmonad on a bare bone arch(without any window manager) with your dot files, it would be helpful for newcomers like me.

[@ivans3806]

I'm so sorry I'll have to live in MacOS in several weeks (due to work) - XMonad is love. Yabai and Amethyst exist, but from what I read they don't provide the same user experience (in addition to need to tweak user protection)

[@masondear8016]

I only still use dwm on my laptop so I don’t need to install extra dependencies, and I run bspwm on my main machine

[@drishalballaney6590]

The good thing about dwm is, configure once and you can use the same config on ANY system, ie it's highly portable. The only issue? Apply bigger patches, and eventually run into some conflicts, so I switched to qtile instead as python is my mother tongue 😅

[@ricowallaby]

Xmonad is great . . . Love your videos DT, but your singing is terrible LOL. Cheers ;-)

[@DistroTube]

I had a bit of a sore throat that day. Might have affected things.

[@ricowallaby]

@@DistroTube Thank god for that. . . Theres still hope heh heh heh! Cheers from Oz mate ;-)

[@siljrath]

i keep coming back to it too. just came back to it a couple days ago. feels like home. so it's fun to encounter this video again, with that sentiment in the intro. i call my config "tabular boonad", and it's from like xmonad 0.13 or 0.14... I'll get around to freshening that up soon enough. ... but when it aint broke, wontfix. ;) such a joy. thanks DT, for sharing the xmonad love. :)

[@FrasSmith]

Every time I watch one of your videos I descover something new that I didn't know before. Today, it was that Peanut Butter M&Ms are a thing. (Also some fantastic stuff about xmonad)

[@cosmicvoid2207]

Make a Conky video!

[@kareemmedhat7762]

first comment lets goooooooo. 17 seconds ago

[@DistroTube]

Fake news!

[@kareemmedhat7762]

@@DistroTube it was, I swear. I can't believe you replied 😃

[@iamthebside8087]

Feel like doing an Xmonad install on Void video? I loved it on Arch, but installing it on Void is a pain in the ass. Haha I said “f” it, Qtile rocks too. =]

[@dougtilaran3496]

TRAITOR ! Openbox still rules ! Ice-rox is right in there

[@metalnwood]

I am liking Qtile, I have not yet found something I cant do that makes me want to learn how to fully understand the haskell config file.

[@CaribouDataScience]

Well DT? Are you still using Xmonad as you main WM?

[@atemoc]

Just as I entirely re-wrote my Qtile configuration !

[@Varian-Killbot]

Share it!

[@atemoc]

@@Varian-Killbot I don't have a GitHub or GitLab account, I should create one to share it, for sure, as well as the scripts that are used with it, and other projects of mine Oh well, I might do that one day!

[@drishalballaney6590]

Yes, we do need a good rice 😉 Even I have an OK qtile rice, but idk if links are allowed in the comments

[@red13emerald]

@@drishalballaney6590 Yes they are, feel free to share!

[@f23anone82]

Sorry, but I see nothing special in this video. How is it better than experience with qtile, dwm, awesome etc. What exact features those WMs lack comparing with Xmonad?

[@hasanabbadi3252]

I like your funny words, magic man.

[@ade5324]

sus?

[@parasbhanot]

Qtile is the best change my mind

[@davebrowning9290]

I'm using Awesome because it's good enough. I don't doubt that XMonad is better, but I don't really want to take the time to learn Haskell right now. I would use QTile but Awesome perfoms better than QTile, and there isn't a QTile build for Debian.

[@joaopauloalbq]

Awesome > XMonad

[@cole9822]

You spelled dwm wrong.

[@gksudolol]

The great thing about git is, if someone wanted to find a specific part of your config you've since removed, they'd just need to look back through the previous commits ;)

[@penguin1714]

If distrotube was God he would remove every drink except water because bloat

[@tomaszwitt7326]

silmy the best :D hehe greetings from Poland :)

[@sbrazenor2]

Everyone knows that stock Ubuntu is the actual best... 🤣

[@SeanClarke]

I'm so confused by this video. Where is your browser?

[@error4159]

I want some M&M's

[@matthewrikard117]

so, when are you gonna cover tmux? or have I just missed that

[@ITalented]

arcolinux?

[@aryanshrivastava2344]

I switched to xmonad today after a fresh arch Linux install i am using xmonad+ xmobar+ lxsession also lightdm i have no idea how to change theme of application like pcmanfm , or nitrogen to dark please help 🙏

[@DistroTube]

Install lxappearance.

[@itsgood3019]

Does anyone know how I can change the font in xmonad, not xmobar?

[@garm0nb0z1a]

It's feh, as in Yiddish feh. Think Curb Your ...

[@al31415]

Hey Derek, from where do you get wallpapers?)

[@LazZanZaz]

Can you use it without any desktop environment?

[@parth46767]

Not here to change anyone's mind but i did try xmonad once and kinda liked it, the only problem for me was to learn a new programming language just to configure the damn thing.. So I shifted to dwm that is configures in C which i am comfortable with. Also dwm is very lightweight an i dont need to install Haskell or Cabal. I can even make my own build and push it to github and install the exact same build on any other system without having to worry about other dependencies and placing the config files in the right directory. All in all, i feel xmoad is a great wm and very extensible but for me dwm is exactly what i needed

[@Neucher]

God bess Xmonad, there isn't a lot or can't do

[@afborro]

Wayland. If they don't implement it some point Xmonad could be dead. X11 Is at the core of it, which incidentally makes Xmonad not quite as light weight as some think it is. Wayland does offer benefits (as long as it all works).

[@drewberchtolzthofen886]

Thank you DT, I really enjoy this WM, especially threecol layout, that zooms pane on hover, this is such a good thing! It's like a software substitution for the second monitor, which in fact you can NOT carry around.

[@allangjtterupernst6437]

I've been running Xmonad / Polybar / Rofi for a few months now and I've not thought about Gnome or Cinnamon since. But as a C ++ / Python programmer, I'm glad I'm done configuring Xmonad because Haskell is a sick sick language :)

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

imo that looks unnecessarily overcomplicated considering you can just type the same or even less keywords for the stuff you want to run at dmenu. Thats kind of "reinventing the wheel" situation you are into.

[@richardistvanthier5620]

I still prefer dwm. With the years grew to be much more of a minimalist... perfect things are closer to minimal than to "beautifully complex in background theory". I have had been enjoying programming in all kinds of functional languages and such, just I grow to not really use them anymore and just C++ or C everything if there is a chance to do so. Okay... I would maybe change to a dm written in some kind of forth-like language maybe ;-)

[@tonythai5991]

DT should open a new channel like DJ

[@greatestcait]

Why would I want to change your mind though?

[@YoutubeChannel-gg3hf]

Hey DT, when i used ur configs, I couldn't get the haskell logo on my xmobar. any reasons why?

[@ricardopinho630]

Hey DT. Comment on the new windows10 features that integrates linux UI apps into Windows10

[@joaopauloalbq]

Awesome is a lot more customizable. Uses asynchronous XCB library. Built in panel, notifications and system tray. Tabs on the panel (saving screen space) :B

[@csabadunai3760]

Xmonad closes the plugin container (?) when switching away and back to a tag. This is very annoying. When I'm watching a fulscreen video and switching away and back it gets minimized. So objectively, since there are other window managers which preserve the fulscreen video it obviously isn't the best with regard to this aspect. ;)

[@wojtekburzynski654]

Could you make video about jgmenu and CLFSWM?

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

The only other person on the planet that has seen CLFSWM. That thing is kinda cool. Basically everything is a frame, just one abstraction, so windows are frames and workspaces are frames (the same abstraction can fulfill the role of multiple concepts), and you can basically have windows containing windows that contain other windows that contain other windows. At least if I'm remembering this right. I should try to live in it, see how it really is.

[@shadowblack5455]

Why would you use xmonad over qtile. Qtile uses an easier mainstream programming language

[@BeansEnjoyer911]

Change your mind? I can’t. However, I really prefer the simplicity of DWM. I’m very familiar with C, and it’s very barebones. From a user standpoint it isn’t “simpler” but from a coders perspective, it feels simpler to me. Some done like the built in top bar, but I honestly don’t mind it. Plus to Xmonad for using a functional language though. I hope to try it again some day.

[@andreasantinato1059]

Hey DT nice video like always, i have a little problem with Conky. i'm able to load my config but it appair like a normal window and not like a persistent widget on the screen. I'm actually using Qtile and i don't know how to fix this problem. I change the owm_window parameters but nothing change

[@nykal1510]

I don't quite get it, I'm on dwm and have no reason to switch from it, since Xmonad is a dwm clone

[@ekekw930]

Hey DT, how are you getting along with the Xmonad startup script?

[@HumbleHuman-k7g]

Man is time to go to Wayland based WM's

[@tic-tech-toe5394]

hey dt, please make a tutorial video on xmonad.actions.command module to make different types of shortcuts

[@LordOfWizardurl]

Hay dt you are the best. Can you tell me what is the packet near your arch btw Coffee Jar

[@OmkaraD]

Hello Derek, I love xmonad as much as you do, it is my favorite WM. Recently i stumbled upon taffybar. It is a haskel package and intended to run with xmonad in replacement to xmobar. I think you should check it out becouse it left me some really good impresions :) enjoy! :)

[@vidhukant1073]

Your treeselect menu was too large, what I have done is I have all the programs I usually use (they're like 5) and some other things like power menu in treeselect while I have dmenu as a "searchable" menu

[@ebn__]

Let me just interject for a moment. What you are referring to as the "Mirror command", is in fact, a data constructor.

[@leksmut]

guys is there time to work left after shilling WMs and reinstalling distros? or it is a sort of hobby?

[@hulucius1479]

You can try a two column layout where the non-master window is vertical accordion.

[@DistroTube]

Yea, I could combine Tall and Accordion. Would make for a interesting layout.

[@hulucius1479]

@@DistroTube For example, working in Emacs and put it in master window. Meanwhile have FireFox, Slack, etc on the right to check documentation and communicate with others. A common workflow to me.

[@blackberry8692]

Thank you Derek for showing us Xmonad configuration in detail. I might try it sometime, being a DWM (Luke's build) fanboy. I use arch btw.

[@ahmedabadabdallah927]

The wm virgin vs the tty chad

[@TomerBenDavid]

Can it be used on mac?

[@guinho988]

how can i copy your git hub xmonad repository and install?

[@mathematicalninja2756]

It might be best but it uses haskell

[@yecinemegdiche3202]

Awesome! Just a nitpick: by default, NSP is just a normal workspace, and it is shown. You need to configure your PP settings to filter it out, which you probably did, but forgot about it and thought it is the default behavior.

[@aziz0x00]

i love DT cuz of this video

[@NekoiNemo]

I'm sure XMonad is great... But i just can't get over some design choices it made: dynamic tiling, having all workspaces always exist even if they are unused, the "weird" way it handles multiple monitors... i3wm has my vote for being the best. P.S. The "accordion" layout seem to be oddly similar to the "stacking" layout in i3wm - one that literally nobody uses, because of how much space it wastes while providing nothing you couldn't already do with, say, tabbed layout.

[@Aleksandar0100]

cringe, all my homies just use the tty RAW

[@cam0227]

I use the tty raw to startx, i'm an absolute power user

[@ade5324]

xmonad is scary to me..

[@ariloguecom]

Hi DT. Can you do a video about wm's ram/resource usage? Some people did this list on Reddit but that list made so many years ago. There is a lot of wm's but we don't know which is(/are) most resource efficient. Thanks from now : )

[@ahmedabadabdallah927]

Dwm is probably the lightest wm. Like all suckless software, it is a program of few lines and its easily customizable

[@umka7536]

I configured Qtile. But I started with Xmonad and still find it the best to use and the most simple. So, I load to Qtile once in a while, but I found Xmonad config more simple and more intuitive. Also, Xmobar - is damn simple and does what I need.