I had a really nice config runnig Gnome2 + XMonad. I tried for hours to get this config running again nicely with Ubuntu 11.10, without much luck.

Then I stepped back and thought for what I'm needing or want a desktop: automounting + wifi.

For automounting I'm now starting 'thunar --daemon &' in my '.xsession', and for wifi and it's config I'm using 'wicd' and otherwise just XMonad.