That's completely wrong (and never was right). NetworkManager is a system-wide deamon and it's user interface is pretty much just a single applet, which you can run absolutely anywhere. There is also a CLI now (nmcli).

(I've been using xmonad and NM on my laptop since xmonad 0.3 or something like that, which should be 3 years now, wow.)

I was comparing it with wpa_supplicant, which if you setup runs automatically at bootup independent of which window manager you use, or if you even use X11. On the other hand at least in ubuntu and debian, installing XMonad and choosing it at gdm means that NetworkManager does not bring up the wireless.

NM 0.8 allows you to make a connection system-wide, so it is not dependent on the nm-applet running (it writes keys in /etc, otherwise, wireless passwords are stored in user's keyring) and it connects to that network whenever it's available. (It's the same with wired ethernet connections, they are also managed with NM, yet you don't need nm-applet, when you plug the cable in, there's a system Eth profile, which just runs DHCP query and connects you; only if you wanted a static IP or some other different setting, you'd have to make your own connection profile or change the system-wide one).

What makes you think that? NetworkManager is independent of the UI, it has a command-line client, too. And you can even run the Gnome NM applet in any panel-thingy/dock that implements the right spec, I believe it's EWMH. I have it in stalonetray (http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net) under OpenBox, it also works under XMonad.

AwesomeWM has a similar guide for working inside Ubuntu, which gets around the issue you speak of: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_...

I haven't tried it myself, but it's possible to use XMonad as your Gnome WM: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gn...

Seconded. I do this myself. (And I set the gnome panel to autohide as well.)

Thats great! I did not know about this.

I use wicd; it sucks less than NetworkManager all around and has interfaces other than an tray applet. It was trivial to swap out on Debian,