Using the xmonad tiling window manger and looking for a way to keep track of your workspaces, the time, and more? This guide shows how you can set up dzen2 as a statusbar with state information from xmonad.
dzen2 is a general purpose statusbar; it can display anything you like from standard in and integrates easily with xmonad or your own scripts. dzen2 is even capable of displaying icons and advanced text formatting.
If you’re not familiar with xmonad and configuring it, see my post on getting started with xmonad on Ubuntu.

Install dzen2
Install dzen2 from the package dzen2 (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install dzen2

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What good is having a large display if you’re constantly rearranging windows to fit them on the screen? I got tired of try to fit a web browser with other smaller windows and decided to try xmonad, a tiling window manager that could do this for me.
A tiling window manager arranges your windows in a grid. This maximizes window sizes and prevents any window from obscuring another.

Installing xmonad
xmonad is available from the Ubuntu repositories. Install xmonad from the package xmonad (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install xmonad

A number of dependencies will be installed with xmonad. They are needed because reconfiguring xmonad requires recompiling it. (Don’t worry, this is handled automatically.)
I’d also highly recommend installing dmenu, a simple application launcher that integrates with xmonad. Install dmenu from the package dwm-tools (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install dwm-tools

From the login screen, you should now be able to select an xmonad session and log in to start xmonad.


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