wmii (rumai) with gnome in Ubuntu 9.10 & 10.04

NOTE: modified from here

This is a step by step to install rumai as the windows manager in gnome.

1. install necessary packages

sudo apt-get install dwm-tools # for menus
sudo apt-get install libixp libx11-dev  # for the install itself (necessary??)

On Lucid Lynx I needed to install these two packages also:

sudo apt-get install 9base libxft2-dev   # plan 9 file system (need on 10.04)

2. Install a good build
The Ubuntu wmii packages (karmic? and jaunty?) and even the current repo can be buggy. Download a solid build (hg2474) here or here. Unpack it, go into the src directory and sudo make install.
3. modify some gnome settings

gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop --type bool false
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/background/draw_background --type bool false
## Tell gnome to use wmii as the window manager
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager wmii --type string

4. have wmii fire up at login
System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications Add an entry for /usr/bin/wmii
5. get rumai
make sure you have ruby and rubygems. Works great with ruby 1.9. (I'm using 1.9.1)

gem install rumai

Also make sure your rubygems are executable by adding something like this to your .bashrc:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.gem/ruby/`ruby -e 'print RUBY_VERSION'`/bin"

6. grab a rumai config wmiirc
To make it easy for beginners, my master branch work's out of the box:

git clone git://github.com/jtprince/wmiirc.git ~/.wmii

For more advanced possibilities, you'll want to start with sunaku's and then branch, etc.:

git clone git://github.com/sunaku/wmiirc.git ~/.wmii

Now make a soft link to the file this wmii will be looking in:

ln -s ~/.wmii ~/.wmii-hg

Now logout and back in and it should work. This is pretty stable and works pretty well. If wmii crashes, restart in a terminal or from the panel (add a "run application") with the command "wmii" or "killall wmii && wmii".