configuring X with xmonad without KDE/gnome

While configuring X11 to use the xmonad tiling window manager instead of the more usual KDE or GNOME, some things were somewhat less then obvious, and I document them here.

.xsession configuration


These are settings that all can be made permanent by adding them to the
.xsession file in your home directory.

disable CAPS, enable Compose
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setxkbmap -option compose:caps


Now you can use the Caps Lock key to compose special characters. E.g.


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• <Caps> ’e   gives é
• <Caps> e=  gives €
• …

… and as a bonus you can’t accidentally press the Caps Lock key any more!

disable beep globally
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xset b off



start gpg-agent on startup
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eval `gpg-agent –daemon`

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start ssh-agent on startup

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eval `ssh-agent –daemon`

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other things

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dmenu

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Install the suckless-tools package for dmenu among things.

Just use <alt>-p to quicklanch apps with dmenu.

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xterm

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I want to use plain xterm as terminal emulator as the tabbing of gnome-terminal and konsole is rather pointless in combination with the tiling.

The default font size was to small. To solve this I did a dirty hack like this:

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• update-alternatives -config xterm and change it to uxterm to have an UTF-8 terminal by default
• edit /usr/bin/uxterm and change the last line by adding -fn 10x20 to it.

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email

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At the moment I’m still using kmail as email client (and accidentally akregator as RSS feed agregator). I’m still thinking about switching that as well.

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… to be continued …