Xmonad/Using xmonad in MATE
Using xmonad in MATE[edit]
MATE is a supported fork of Gnome 2, with various components renamed to avoid collisions with Gnome components. At present, Fedora ships both MATE and an xmonad session using it (xmonad-mate
package); for other platforms, look for MATE in your package manager or check http://mate-desktop.org.
The current development version of xmonad-contrib
from git has an XMonad.Config.Mate
which should work out of the box on most platforms. For earlier versions, you may want to copy XMonad.Config.Gnome
to ~/.xmonad/lib/XMonad/Config/Mate.hs
and replace (matching case as appropriate) all instances of gnome
with mate
. This will affect the terminal, the session manager connection, and the X11 message sent to activate the run command dialog, among other things.
Replacing the default window manager[edit]
You will need to create a freedesktop.org
desktop file for xmonad
, probably in /usr/share/applications/xmonad.desktop
:
[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=XMonad Exec=/usr/bin/xmonad NoDisplay=true X-GNOME-WMName=XMonad X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager X-GNOME-Provides=windowmanager X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true
To replace marco
with xmonad
for all sessions, use the following (per user):
dconf write /org/mate/session/required-components/windowmanager xmonad
In more recent versions of MATE, the key to change is
dconf write /org/mate/desktop/session/required-components/window-manager xmonad
You may wish to use `dconf-editor` so you can locate the key in your version of MATE.
Alternatively, you may need to set this via gsettings on distributions such as Arch
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components.windowmanager xmonad
(This may require the same change as above; use `gsettings-editor` to edit interactively.)
(TODO: alternative session file)
xmonad-log-applet[edit]
You can use xmonad-log-applet to send xmonad status (see DynamicLog) to the MATE panel instead of using xmobar or another panel. This requires DBus for communication, so as yet cannot be used with StatusBar.
Recent MATE with window-manager-launcher
[edit]
Recently Linux Mint upgraded its MATE to use a separate script to start the window manager; as shipped, it only works with a limited number of window managers that does not include xmonad. I have minimally modified it to support other window managers, including a first cut at user-installed ones. (If someone has a better way to handle this, please do so; I have no way to host this file currently.) My changes are both marked with # sigh
.
#!/usr/bin/python3 import sys import os import gettext import signal import subprocess import time import gi from gi.repository import Gio # i18n gettext.install("mintdesktop", "/usr/share/linuxmint/locale") settings = Gio.Settings("com.linuxmint.desktop") # Detect which DE is running if "XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP" not in os.environ: print ("window-manager-launcher: XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is not set! Exiting..") sys.exit(0) current_desktop = os.environ["XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP"] if current_desktop not in ["MATE", "XFCE"]: print ("Current desktop %s is not supported." % current_desktop) sys.exit(0) if current_desktop == "MATE": wm = settings.get_string("mate-window-manager") else: wm = settings.get_string("xfce-window-manager") # Kill all compositors/managers first p = subprocess.Popen(['ps', '-u', str(os.getuid())], stdout=subprocess.PIPE) out, err = p.communicate() processes_found = False for process in ['compton', "marco", "xfwm4", "compiz", "metacity", "openbox", "awesome" ]: for line in out.splitlines(): pname = line.decode('utf-8').split()[-1] if process in pname: pid = int(line.split(None, 1)[0]) print ("Killing pid %d (%s)" % (pid, pname)) try: os.kill(pid, signal.SIGKILL) except Exception as e: print ("Failed to kill process %d (%s): %s" % (pid, pname, e)) processes_found = True if (processes_found): # avoid race conditions before launching new WMs print ("Waiting 0.2 seconds...") time.sleep(0.2) # sigh os.environ["PATH"] += ':' + os.path.expanduser("~/.local/bin") if wm == "marco": settings = Gio.Settings("org.mate.Marco.general") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", False) subprocess.Popen(["marco", "--no-composite", "--replace"]) elif wm == "marco-composite": settings = Gio.Settings("org.mate.Marco.general") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", True) subprocess.Popen(["marco", "--composite", "--replace"]) elif wm == "marco-compton": settings = Gio.Settings("org.mate.Marco.general") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", False) subprocess.Popen(["marco", "--no-composite", "--replace"]) time.sleep(2) subprocess.Popen(["compton", "--backend", "glx", "--vsync", "opengl-swc"]) elif wm == "xfwm4": subprocess.Popen(["xfconf-query", "-c", "xfwm4", "-p", "/general/use_compositing", "--set", "false"]) subprocess.Popen(["xfwm4", "--compositor=off", "--replace"]) elif wm == "xfwm4-composite": subprocess.Popen(["xfconf-query", "-c", "xfwm4", "-p", "/general/use_compositing", "--set", "true"]) subprocess.Popen(["xfwm4", "--compositor=on", "--replace"]) elif wm == "xfwm4-compton": subprocess.Popen(["xfconf-query", "-c", "xfwm4", "-p", "/general/use_compositing", "--set", "false"]) subprocess.Popen(["xfwm4", "--compositor=off", "--replace"]) time.sleep(2) subprocess.Popen(["compton", "--backend", "glx", "--vsync", "opengl-swc"]) elif wm == "compiz": subprocess.Popen(["compiz", "--replace"]) elif wm == "metacity": settings = Gio.Settings("org.gnome.metacity") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", False) subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) elif wm == "metacity-composite": settings = Gio.Settings("org.gnome.metacity") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", True) subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) elif wm == "metacity-compton": settings = Gio.Settings("org.gnome.metacity") settings.set_boolean("compositing-manager", False) subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) time.sleep(2) subprocess.Popen(["compton", "--backend", "glx", "--vsync", "opengl-swc"]) elif wm == "openbox": subprocess.Popen(["openbox", "--replace"]) elif wm == "openbox-compton": subprocess.Popen(["openbox", "--replace"]) time.sleep(2) subprocess.Popen(["compton", "--backend", "glx", "--vsync", "opengl-swc"]) elif wm == "awesome": # subprocess.call(["killall", "marco", "xfwm4", "compiz", "metacity", "openbox", "awesome"]) # Kill all other window managers that might possibly still be running # time.sleep(0.1) # Wait some time until really all other window managers are killed otherwise awesome won't start up subprocess.Popen(["awesome"]) if current_desktop == "MATE": # The mate panel seems to move up a bit when starting awesome subprocess.Popen(["mate-panel", "--replace"]) # this seems to fix this issue # sigh else: subprocess.Popen([wm, "--replace"])
Freeing up Mod4[edit]
The MATE Advanced Menu widget will grab `mod4`. You can switch to a different menu widget or reconfigure the menu widget:
- Right click the menu widget
- Select "Preferences"
- Select the "Main button" pane (this should already be visible)
- Click the "Keyboard Shortcut" button, which will show the "Menu" key
- Press Backspace to clear the button, or some other button if you want to map a different key to it.