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## xmonad-ubuntu12.04.md

      
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              xmonad-ubuntu12.04.md
            
          
    My Xmonad/GNU/Linux environment

Some notes on getting things to work, based on experience with Ubuntu 12.04 in May 2012.
Version Control Systems

Really need to start with
   sudo apt-get install mercurial
   sudo apt-get install git git-cvs git-svn
   sudo apt-get install subversion

The git-cvs and git-svn tools can be skipped when you are confident of never needing to deal with those tools ever again.
Also consider repository browsers
   sudo apt-get install tortoisehg gitg

And git completion is nice:
   git clone git://github.com/markgandolfo/git-bash-completion.git .gitbashcompletion

(My bash initialisation expects that directory name.)
SSH

Generate an SSH key and append the id_rsa.pub file to the .ssh/authorized_keys file on

the local machines I will want to access, particularly login
remote vc services: bitbucket.org, sourceforge.net, github.com

Dropbox

It works to just use the version in the Software Center, i.e.,
   sudo apt-get install dropbox

does the right thing.  This is a necessary prelude as there are some useful files I’ve stored there.
(Local) Repositories of mine

All in the home directory.


hg clone ssh://login/hgrepos/homeconfig
Follow up with
      for i in .bash_envrc .bashintrc .bashrc .profile .xmobarrc .xsessionrc
      do
        ln -s homeconfig/$i .
      done
      ln -s homeconfig/mercurialrc .hgrc
      ln -s homeconfig/sshconfig .ssh

Note that it’s important to do the symbolic linking into homeconfig, rather than simply having the home directory be a mercurial repository.
The latter makes hg too slow as it scans everything under $HOME to look for changed files etc.


hg clone ssh://login/hgrepos/texmf


hg clone ssh://login/hgrepos/.emacs.d


Window Manager


get the haskell platform from the Software Center


install the necessary X11 and WM libraries:
    sudo apt-get install libxinerama-dev libx11-dev libxft-dev gnome-panel


Then
    cabal install xmonad
    cabal install xmobar --flags="with_xft"


Get my own xmonad configuration with hg clone ssh://login/hgrepos/xmonad.d .xmonad.
(Xmonad needs to bind [M-S-q] to gnome-session-quit in order to be able to logout cleanly.)


Some files that need creating:
sudo vi /usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop
    [Desktop Entry]
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Name=XMonad
    Comment=Lightweight tiling window manager
    Exec=gnome-session --session=xmonad
    Icon=xmonad.png
    Type=XSession

and sudo vi /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/xmonad.session
    [GNOME Session]
    Name=Xmonad session
    RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;gnome-panel;
    RequiredProviders=windowmanager;notifications;
    DefaultProvider-windowmanager=xmonad
    DefaultProvider-notifications=notification-daemon

Then you will be able to select xmonad on the login screen.  Including the gnome-panel in the RequiredComponents gives a basic Gnome panel/launcher thing.  My xmobar setup has that at the top of the screen, so move the Gnome panel to the bottom of the screen.  Use [Alt Mouse-3] to configure the panel’s position and its attached widgets.


User-level Programs


Thunderbird

installed by default, but user accounts need to be configured
also need to get plug-ins such as External Editor
get other add-ons from add-ons interface:

Contact Photos
Enigmail
QuickText


pain with fonts:

go to Display/Fonts/Advanced. Set everything to Ubuntu Mono 16, or whatever other mono font you like.
Then uncheck the the "Use fixed width font for plain text messages" option.
That should help the aesthetics of message composition


workrave (RSI prevention)

with sudo apt-get install workrave


Password Gorilla

get from github with git clone git@github.com:mn200/gorilla.git
executable gorilla.tcl can be symlinked to from $HOME/bin


Emacs

see Cassou’s emacs-snapshot page for information about getting emacs-24 before it’s officially released.


LaTeX

go to TeX Live to get the installation machinery
get AucTeX through elpa (see .emacs.d/init.el)


Compilers

gcc is already installed, it seems
g++, mlton both available via apt-get
polyml (also in dropbox; needs g++)


HOL

git clone git@github.com:mn200/HOL.git
build as usual


pidgin

sudo apt-get install pidgin
ln -s ~/Dropbox/linux-config/pidgin-configs ~/.purple
mute sounds in the Tools menu of the “Buddy List” window


quodlibet


in ~/external-repos/, do hg clone https://quodlibet.googlecode.com/hg/ quodlibet


also, do svn checkout http://mutagen.googlecode.com/svn/trunk mutagen


installation instructions (in quodlibet/quodlibet)
  ./setup.py build
  sudo ./setup.py install

similarly for mutagen, putting both into /usr/local/bin


also symlink ln -s ~/external-repos/quodlibet/plugins/ ~/.quodlibet/ once the .quodlibet directory exists to get the queue-only plugin, which needs enabling.
Then the order drop-down needs to change to “queue only”.


Utilities


character set conversion: sudo apt-get install recode


GTK xmessage clone: sudo apt-get install gxmessage


markdown: sudo apt-get install markdown


ImageMagick tools: sudo apt-get install imagemagick


convmv (for renaming files with weirdo encodings): sudo apt-get install convmv
For example,
    convmv --nfd -f utf8 -t utf8 filenames

is good for converting filenames so that they’ll work properly on a Mac.


Other Stuff


Libraries

SML source-code: scp -r gorton:lib/sml ~/lib (todo: put these on github)


Configuring standard tools

gnome-terminal: turn off menus, change font to Ubuntu Mono-11


Mount NICTA/ADE drives

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
Append ADE drive info to /etc/fstab (take from dropbox)


About this document

Turn it into reasonable HTML with
  recode -d u8..h4 < xmonad-ubuntu12.04.md | markdown > xm.html

A better approach would be to embed the markdown output inside explicit <meta> tags around a UTF-8 declaration etc.