when I do ^L, only black pixels except for the shell prompt

haha I was interested in seeing how I could set it up myself - any hints before I start researching a similar setup?

you can configure gnome easily to look that way (with a hidden panel and no icons, and a bit of tweking of your compoositor)

or you just write a tiny ~/.xinitrc that calls evilwm or cwm

    xsetroot -solid black
    evilwm &
    exec xterm

thanks!