So I am testing Arch Linux because I was considering switching. I am running Arch on the latest version of VirtualBox. After I set up the xmonad tiling window manager and rebooted, only the wallpaper popped up. There was no dock, no icons, and no mouse. After reading the manual 2 times over, nothing helped. If anyone knows how to get xmonad to work, that would be great.
Thanks!
I have been using XMonad on Arch for nearly an year now, so I guess I am eligible to answer this.
As per my understanding, you have installed xmonad, xmonad-contrib and xmobar from the Arch official repos. Now, the first thing that you should do is make a configuration file, both for XMonad itself, and XMobar, which is its status bar. Your xmonad configuration goes in ~/.config/xmonad/xmonad.hs (default) or ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs. XMobar config goes in ~/.config/xmobar/xmobarrc0.hs. If you are using a login manager, xmonad will start as usual, else just use ~/.xinitrc with exec xmonad command for starting xmonad.
Now, as you mentioned, wallpaper is being displayed for you, which might be due to nitrogen or feh or anything similar that is autostarting and setting up your wallpaper. Else, everything you want, you have to set it up yourself in the xmonad config file. The wallpaper also doesn't start by itself if you have a clean install. XMonad just gives a black screen with a black cross for the mouse pointer.
Dock: There isn't any dock on xmonad. If you want a status bar, you can use xmobar or polybar or anything else. I use xmobar with clickable objects, which acts like a dock. Configure it as you want.
Icons: Window managers have a keyboard-driven workflow. You can define workspaces which are clickable, and have your mouse do the switching. But you won't have icons on your Desktop with your files. For that, use any Desktop Environment. You can use xmonad with KDE, Xfce, etc. too, if you want that specific workflow.
Mouse: Well, you should have a cross for a pointer, even if you do not setup anything. If that isn't working, then there is some issue with the drivers that were loaded. But, for a proper arrow-shaped pointer, you can set it up in the xmonad config itself.
Now, you might wonder how you will launch applications if there is nothing to click. For that, you have dmenu, rofi and many other prompts which you can setup. For me, the super key launches rofi in a nice, centered window with application names and icons and fuzzy searching enabled. Configure to your heart's content. A window manager showcases your creativity.
Hope I could give the helping-hand to know what is possible. If you want some ready-made configurations, look for DistroTube's dotfiles.