xmonad install on OpenSUSE 11.2
Just my notes on how I got xmonad working on my PC at home (I also am running it at work). Please remember that I am only configuring this to work for my user account instead of setting it up globally.
Prerequisites
The Glasgow Haskell Compilation system - http://packages.opensuse-community.org/index.jsp?distro=openSUSE_112&searchTerm=ghc
Installed via 1-click install
Installed via YaST:
xorg-x11-devel
xorg-x11-libx11-devel
xorg-x11-libXext-devel
zlib-devel
Cabal - Downloaded http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/cabal-install/0.6.4/cabal-install-0.6.4.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf cabal-install-0.6.4.tar.gz
$ cd cabal-install-0.6.4/
$ chmod +x bootstrap.sh
$ ./bootstrap.sh
...
Linking dist/build/cabal/cabal ...
Installing executable(s) in /home/jholbrook/.cabal/binThe 'cabal' program has been installed in /home/jholbrook/.cabal/bin/
You should either add /home/jholbrook/.cabal/bin to your PATH
or copy the cabal program to a directory that is on your PATH.The first thing to do is to get the latest list of packages with:
cabal updateThis will also create a default config file (if it does not already
exist) at /home/jholbrook/.cabal/configBy default cabal will install programs to /home/jholbrook/.cabal/bin
If you do not want to add this directory to your PATH then you can
change the setting in the config file, for example you could use:
symlink-bindir: /home/jholbrook/bin$ ~/.cabal/bin/update
Config file path source is default config file.
Config file /home/jholbrook/.cabal/config not found.
Writing default configuration to /home/jholbrook/.cabal/config
Downloading the latest package list from hackage.haskell.org$ ln -s ~/.cabal/bin/cabal ~/bin/cabal
$ cabal install xmonad
$ cabal install xmonad-contrib
$ ln -s ~/.cabal/bin/xmonad ~/bin/xmonad
Edit ~/.xinitrc and add the following:
exec /home/username/bin/xmonad
Restart X and you should be running xmonad. Hit ALT+SHIFT+ENTER to open a shell
Here is an alternate way to get xmonad running with ubuntu 9.10
Hope this helps as well.
Thanks John, this went smoothly!
Some notes I took when I tried this (openSUSE 11.2):
* need to install
xorg-x11-libX11-devel(capital X in libX11). I was installing via zypper and it kept saying “xorg-x11-libx11-devel not found”.* install cabal as above. I was surprised by compiler warnings, after reading about Xmonad design and empasis on -Wall, but then I realised I was compiling cabal, so no concern
* update cabal with
$ ~/.cabal/bin/cabal update* after Update, cabal told me there was a new cabal-install, which I installed (after the symlink above), with
$ cabal install cabal-install* installing xmonad: some compiler warnings when building the X11 lib, but again, not xmonad per se
* installing xmonad-contrib, no issues (this is where I was expecting trouble)
* you can probably fiddle with the WINDOWMANAGER system variable to switch between xmonad and kwin/metacity. I haven’t tried this yet
Thanks for the updated notes. I’m actually making the move to Arch Linux. Only machine left on OpenSUSE is my home machine. Xmonad works really well on Arch and the configuration is an absolute breeze – http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xmonad