- Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

Re: [arch-general] We have lost the desktop war. The reason? Windows 7.
by hollunder＠gmx.at 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:49:01 -0500 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 9:01 AM, <hollunder(a)gmx.at> wrote: > > Am I happy to hear that. > > I say this because I'm under the impression that people see only two > > kinds of linux uses: > > 1) The traditional server > > 2) The Desktop > > > > You can, at this time, still do both, but everything in between is > > getting more and more difficult. > > > > The problem is that the Desktop Environments, GNOME and KDE, in > > their quest for "integrated desktop experience" push more and more > > stuff that's really only useful to those DEs deeper and deeper into > > the system. > > If you as a user need or want it or not, you get it. > > > > > > I'd like to provide an example. > > I'm using an oldish PC and like to pick the apps I use myself, > > therefor the DE's so-called 'integration' is just unnecessary and > > rather hindering in the background. I also like configuration. Those > > are the main reasons I don't use DEs. > > > > Recently I tried to figure out what console-kit is actually good > > for. Here's an excerpt of the manual that I especially like: > > Defining the Problem > > To be written. > > http://www.freedesktop.org/software/ConsoleKit/doc/ConsoleKit.html#id312255 > > > > I figured out that it's only useful for something called 'fast user > > switching', something I definitely don't need. > > When trying to remove it I figured that HAL requires it. > > HAL also requires something called policy-kit, yet another thing I > > don't know what it does. > > I recompiled HAL without either, and the system still works as > > before. > > > > Somewhere during the research I figured that HAL is supposed to be > > replaced by something called device-kit. HAL isn't really needed > > says the author in an email, pretty much all the work is done by > > udev etc.. So I figured, hey, why not just remove HAL, this way the > > kits won't come back with the next update, and all I use HAL for is > > mounting usb drives, something that can be done with udev rules as > > well. > > > > Well, trying to do this I found five apps requiring it, the most > > surprising: xorg-server > > > > Conclusion: > > Yeah, great, install xorg for a minimal graphical desktop, what you > > get is console-kit, for a minor feature in a monster DE. > > When will "Desktop" people start to see that they are being > > intrusive? They live in their own small bubble called GNOME or KDE > > and can't ever imagine anyone not wanting to use this. > > Sorry for this "slightly" off topic rant, but it annoys me on a > > regular basis when I see applications depend on gnome or kde, > > mostly for some stupid reason called 'integration' which really > > isn't of much use in the specific DE they integrate with and a > > hindrance to everyone who's not running exactly that DE. > > > > So please, next time you call something integration, think beyond > > the bubble. In our little Linux world with limited developer time > > we need real integration, real solutions and still > > freedom of choice. > > Just a personal reply to say that I loved this email. I've been so > enraged with this recently. I actually get _angry_ about the xorg hal > integration (I have never used hal) - as it means that BY DEFAULT > starting xorg fails because it has no keyboard or mouse; you can, > thankfully, shut off the hal integration with a Option > "AutoAddDevices" "False" in the ServerFlags section of xorg.conf. But > still, what the fuck? For all the history of xorg, it has correctly > done the basics of detection a ordinary mouse and keyboard. But not > any longer. For what reason? I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA! > > Thanks for the email. It makes me feel like I'm not alone in my > absolute hatred for the direction these things are going. Thanks for your reply Arvid and Aaron. I'm sure there are a lot more people who feel this way, your replies make me a bit more confident that this situation can be changed. Maybe something can be done on Arch to work against this development? The closer to the core a package is the more careful we have to be with dependencies, I think. It's easy to replace a text editor, impossible to replace xorg, etc.. The other thing I can think of is talking to upstream. Maybe they're not that aware of this issue and think along the lines of: "Everyone has HAL installed anyway, it's no problem if we use it to do xyz." Philipp

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[arch-general] polkit v.s policykit
by Mathieu Clabaut 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Hello all, It appears I've got two similar packages on my computer: - polkit, which is needed by the following packages : :: consolekit: requiert polkit>=0.94 :: devicekit-disks: requiert polkit>=0.94 :: devicekit-power: requiert polkit>=0.94 :: gconf: requiert polkit>=0.94 :: polkit-gnome: requiert polkit>=0.94 :: system-tools-backends: requiert polkit>=0.94 -policykit, which is needed by the following packages : :: hal: requiert policykit>=0.9-6 :: polkit-qt: requiert policykit :: pulseaudio: requiert policykit As noted on the forum ( http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=644090#p644090) they do not reference the same policy rules. My guess is that policykit is due to be removed and replaced by polkit. But in the meanwhile the system-wide privileges are very difficult to manage ! Can someone tell me more about those packages ? What shall I do to have a functional privilege management ? Thanks for any tip, -Mathieu

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[arch-general] Hardinfo doesn´t show USB Infos after Kernel Update
by Jürgen Hagemann 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Hello. after a kernel Update, hardinfo from community repo doesn´t show any USB Device Informations. If I boot my alternate LTS-Kernel all infos are shown. -- Jürgen

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[arch-general] Xorg strange keyboard behaviour
by Philipp Gesang 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Good morning, since a few days I'm experiencing an unwanted behaviour in X: after some time, apparently when cycling keyboard layouts, the key just don't work as expected anymore. For example pressing RALT will give return, the left arrow will be remapped to change group etc. Terminating and restarting X will remove the problem; everything works fine on terminals. The error is not reproducible but seems to be related to/caused by layout switching. And I'm switching very often. I'm using Openbox 3.4.7.2, Kxkb, Xorg 1.6.3.901-1. On my second box where I use wmii with keybound scripts for layout switching the error didn't show up yet. I'm appending xorg.conf, xkb configuration, and selected output of xev _after_ the error occured. Feel free to request any logs. Thanks for Your help! Philipp setxkbmap -print http://pastie.org/private/uxqg99n6uhap9dknis1gig xorg.conf http://pastie.org/private/qchqolhh0dltdtidnrxb6q xevents http://pastie.org/private/1a6edox5b1r8fdvkbbxoq

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[arch-general] Xorg strange keyboard behaviour
by Philipp Gesang 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Good morning, since a few days I'm experiencing an unwanted behaviour in X: after some time, apparently when cycling keyboard layouts, the key just don't work as expected anymore. For example pressing RALT will give return, the left arrow will be remapped to change group etc. Terminating and restarting X will remove the problem; everything works fine on terminals. The error is not reproducible but seems to be related to/caused by layout switching. And I'm switching very often. I'm using Openbox 3.4.7.2, Kxkb, Xorg 1.6.3.901-1. On my second box where I use wmii with keybound scripts for layout switching the error didn't show up yet. I'm appending xorg.conf, xkb configuration, and selected output of xev _after_ the error occured. Feel free to request any logs. Thanks for Your help! Philipp setxkbmap -print http://pastie.org/private/uxqg99n6uhap9dknis1gig xorg.conf http://pastie.org/private/qchqolhh0dltdtidnrxb6q xevents http://pastie.org/private/1a6edox5b1r8fdvkbbxoq

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[arch-general] Xorg strange keyboard behaviour
by Philipp Gesang 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Good morning, since a few days I'm experiencing an unwanted behaviour in X: after some time, apparently when cycling keyboard layouts, the key just don't work as expected anymore. For example pressing RALT will give return, the left arrow will be remapped to change group etc. Terminating and restarting X will remove the problem; everything works fine on terminals. The error is not reproducible but seems to be related to/caused by layout switching. And I'm switching very often. I'm using Openbox 3.4.7.2, Kxkb, Xorg 1.6.3.901-1. On my second box where I use wmii with keybound scripts for layout switching the error didn't show up yet. I'm appending xorg.conf, xkb configuration, and selected output of xev _after_ the error occured. Feel free to request any logs. Thanks for Your help! Philipp

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[arch-general] octave and scilab startup error
by Uli Armbruster 24 Oct '09

24 Oct '09

Hi First of all, I have [testing] enabled and I'm on 32bit. I wanted to take a look at these two alternatives of matlab. Both of them don't work here, both are complaining about a missing library error while loading shared libraries: libgfortran.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory After installing gcc-fortran it worked, so it seems like we need a rebuild here with corrected dependencies for [testing] (octave) and [community-testing] (scilab) Greetz Army

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Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Strange behaviour of pacman
by Pierre Chapuis 24 Oct '09

24 Oct '09

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:48:58 +1000, Allan McRae <allan(a)archlinux.org> wrote: > Jan de Groot wrote: > > On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 15:18 -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote: > > > >> Are you saying that the .pyo files are no longer architecture > >> independent? I was under the assumption they were. > >> > > > > Actually, they're even python-version specific. Updating python could > > break the precompiled .pyo files. > > > > And this whole issue was a fairly major source of headaches during the > python-2.6 transition... which is why I started making the python > packaging policy to deal with them, although that obviously was never > finished with (in fact, I had never seen the comment with --optimize=1 > in it). > > Now my main concern about all of this is that .pyc and .pyo files used > to contain full paths to where they were created. That meant they need > to be created on the users system and not during the packaging stage. > I have not confirmed if this is still the case. > > So the best way to deal with them seems to be: > 1) touch them during packaging > 2) generate them during post_install() I have found a way to automate that which is, I believe, not PKGBUILD-dependant. Here's what I do in the PKGBUILD: [...] install="pyo_remover.install" [...] build() { [...] # Take care of .pyo files cd $pkgdir echo "post_install() {" > $startdir/$install for _i in $(find . -name '*.pyo'); do echo "rm -f "$(echo "$_i" | cut -c2-) >> $startdir/$install echo > "$_i" done echo -e '}\npost_upgrade() {\npost_install $1\n}\n' >> $startdir/$install } pyo_remover.install can be anything, even an empty file. For packages that need a .install file this has to be adapted. Does this look like a good way to solve the problem? I know the way I do it for now is kind of ugly, but I think it could be much cleaner if the same kind of thing was done directly by makepkg. -- catwell

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[arch-general] How to add a POP-UP menu item
by ibear 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

I use dolphin, and when I right click on a folder, I can execute a command "Open Terminal Here" through the popup menu. My question is Can I do so when I right click the blank area of dolphin folder view?

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[arch-general] firefox extension (add on) 'Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant' is insecure
by andrew james 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

I have wondered why that extension was in my browser, I think the problem began because I copied a profile from the system microsoft windows xp that I use occasionally. If it is an extension to your browser, whatever system, you are advised to disable it. there is some links to reports new. I assume there is truth, http://www.i4u.com/article27674.html http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=5CF0A4A7-1A64-67EA-E45F5A54F2136086 I found the report recently, is it fixed yet? I though best to forward the report immediately. andrew

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