But, that's just my opinion.
Yeah, this comment is kind of like that. Most "modern" windowmanagers are much more about making the desktop pretty than making it usable. Me, I'm happily still running fvwm2 (though I use XMonad every once in a while), and not only does it not waste cycles on things I'm not looking at, it is configurable quickly and easily to an extent that the mainstream Gnome WMs have a hard time touching. XMonad takes that a step further by allowing configuration directly in Haskell (in my perfect world fvwm2 would use guile, but I'm not really complaining).
When you want to improve your efficiency at repetitive tasks or basic interactions with your computer, dropping relatively simple "Just Work" solutions in favor of more flexible options makes complete sense. Arguing against a meager time investment to make your UI yours strikes me as rather wrongheaded.
I have spent a bit of time configuring Xmonad, but the configuration has lasted me for 2+ years and has saved me an infinite amount of frustration. I used Windows for a while at work, and the constant interaction with the mouse makes my hand hurt. With Xmonad, I never have to use the mouse. (I use it for casual web browsing, and whatnot, but I never need it to do real work.)
I have also wasted a lot of time configuring Emacs -- my .emacs and support files are more than 2000 lines long. But everything I've spent time on has eliminated small bits of frustration during my work (and play), so even if I can't justify the time savings, I can enjoy life more. Since you eventually die, I think it's worth enjoying life.
Xmonad makes my life similarly enjoyable.
The only thing that bothers me about Xmonad is that there is no "instance Monad X" in the source code -- Monad is automatically derived on the X type.
I just accept that there are some things that need a mouse, and use xpdf to read pdfs.
Personally I find I get increased productivity out of not constantly fiddling with window placement.
On the other hand, there are things, that really aren't going to work just out of the box and are hard to configure. Xmonad has quite a different behaviour than Gnome, and sometimes different from what usual desktop app expect. It might be necessary to create a specific settings for a single application, sometimes. But that's what makes it beneficial. If it were just another bad copy of metacity or kwin-like window manager, without adequate support of EWMH and stuff like it, which is the case of many and many X11 WMs, then it would be really worthless.
Sure, you can do that. But then you also have to take the time to understand THAT config (which, isn't even optimized for _YOU_, to begin with) and get USED to that . . .
>I agree that at first it seems like it's going to be a huge hassle to setup but it's really not that bad after you've done it once. You also have to invest time in understanding how the config goes, and have a bit of experience with Haskell, and Xmonad itself, to even create a config that really is good for you.
Maybe twm is something for me, maybe it isn't. I really don't know - because I only gave it one try, and quickly gave up (because I was having some problems with it, and wasn't willing at that time to set aside time to resolve those problems).
Also, stop calling tiling window managers "twm". "twm" is a specific window manager that comes with X. (Now there's a hard-to-use window manager.)
Finally, what problems were you having? If you just didn't like it, say so.
Currently my xmonad.hs looks like this:
import XMonad
import XMonad.Config.Gnome
main = xmonad gnomeConfig
{ modMask = mod4Mask
}
Sometimes HN makes me sad.