Running the Awesome window manager within MATE

Awesome is a very good tiling window manager that provides neat features like automatic layouting of windows, good multi-display support with per display workspaces and more. Since it is only a window manager, you will probably miss some of MATE's conveniences like the network manager, application menus, automatic updates etc.

Fortunately, you can run Awesome within MATE, by following these steps (tested on Ubuntu MATE 16.04):

Awesome + MATE

• Create the following file at /usr/share/xsessions/Xsession.desktop:

  Copy[Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Name=Awesome + MATE
  Comment=Awesome + MATE
  Exec=/etc/X11/Xsession
  

• Create the following file at ~/.xsession

  Copy#!/bin/sh
  mate-session &
  awesome
  

• Sign out, then choose "Awesome + Mate" clicking on the little cog in the upper right corner.

• I suggest, you remove the MATE panel at the bottom, remove the notification area from the one at the top, go to "Properties", and uncheck "Expand".

• You can disable the desktop icons in Control Panel -> Look and Feel -> MATE Tweaks

Gnome-Keyring for SSH

I was having issues using the gnome-keyring daemon for SSH. To fix this, the following seems to work:

• Comment out the use-ssh-agent line in /etc/X11/Xsession.options.

• Change your ~/.xsession to this:

  Copy#!/bin/sh
  eval $(/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon)
  export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
  mate-session &
  awesome