Op 26 nov. 2017 10:52 schreef "Alan E. Davis via arch-general" < arch-general@archlinux.org>: To clarify, I have been running the same Arch Linux installation for many months, without a hitch. Until this event. [...] I will reinstall Arch Linux, no doubt, unless I can fix this. A quicker way may be to try another user first. My best guesses; you use some desktop environment and it has included wine's .desktop files and made at least one of them default for $action. So at some point, you ask your DE to execute $action; Let's say you open a JPEG file in a filemanager. The file manager looks up the default program, finds that it is wine related and executes the corresponding command. That program crashes for whatever reason, making it look like the entire system is broken (which it isn't necessarily). So, will an mkfs, followed by a fresh Arch install fix the problem? Probably, until you repeat the same steps, ending up in the same situation... An easier approach may be to create a new user, log in with that and repeat the action (in the example above, opening a JPEG). Same error? Then it's something system wide. No error? Then the problem hides in the homedir of the first user. Though, on second thought; the entire problem could be just ADE ;). If the problem is that it auto-starts on logon or whatever, try renaming the wine directory (~/.wine) first. That's just about comparable to reinstalling Windows... Where it comes to ADE: Can't help there, i'm afraid. I limit my collection to drm-free materials (organised with Calibre). Ps I often used $WINEPREFIX to separate Windows programs from one another. Mvg, Guus Snijders

Op 26 nov. 2017 13:15 schreef "Guus Snijders" <gsnijders@gmail.com>: Op 26 nov. 2017 10:52 schreef "Alan E. Davis via arch-general" < arch-general@archlinux.org>: To clarify, I have been running the same Arch Linux installation for many months, without a hitch. Until this event. [...] I will reinstall Arch Linux, no doubt, unless I can fix this. A quicker way may be to try another user first. My best guesses; you use some desktop environment and it [...] If the problem is that it auto-starts on logon or whatever, try renaming the wine directory (~/.wine) first. My apologies; while I was typing the initial response, I failed to take the subject into account. Though my main points stay, the first troubleshooting steps are easy; - log in (on a console, not X) as your "normal" user and rename the wine directory in $HOME. - then login in Gnome and see if the error still appears If the error is gone, it was something with wine (though I can't see any reason for autostarting wine), and you can work from there. If the error remains, try another user. If that works, it's something in the gnome config of user 1. Mvg, Guus Snijders

Thank you for the tips. I am able to run either i3 or xfce4 through startx. Not gnome. GDM will not work. I have made another account. I cannot start GDM as root, nor run Gnome through startx/.xinitrc, as root. For now, I am abandoning my experiment with Gnome on this machine. I will also try cinnamon or mate, perhaps enlightenment, and check where that ends up. I wonder whether it's related to Wayland, which I don't understand. The inability to boot up a DM is a concern. Thank you for your thoughts. You got me to thinking about my commitment to Free Software. I will re-double my vigilance against dependence on non-free infrastructure of any kind. [The following is a probably excessive personal account of my problems and experiences with Non-Free vs Free Software. I hope they don't amount to excuse-making for my slide down the slippery slope. I apologize for this lengthy read.] I laud your commitment to freedom. As a high school science teacher, it broke my heart to see that students would be deprived of (what I felt were) important online/digital learning opportunities, because they only ran, mainly, on Windoze, albeit many were available for the apple walled garden as well. I did not give up, and found they were able to run some of them, by various tricks. Printers could be used with workarounds, albeit, with my unsophisticated skills, not to their full capacity---even when I had paid the full price. My colleagues derided my stubborn determination to use GNU/Linux, when Windoze was purchased for us all through government funds. I worked in an isolated small district, where the powers that be, the administrators, believed the received wisdom that anything free must be deficient. (I was forced to install Windoze on Virtual Box to report grades.) Most of the computers I have owned had graphics cards and network adapters with only proprietary drivers, or for which I greedily refused to use free drivers because i wanted to have the most computing power I could. I admit that I have followed the path of least resistance, and often used non-free drivers. I talked the talk, but did not always walk the walk. Even now, I have recently built a machine with an Nvidia graphics card, and have been using proprietary drives, for the free ones did not work as well. Truth be told, I did not understand the nuances of the distinction, or which cards were better using free drivers, although I had researched this to some extent. I will consider using Parabola GNU/Linux, or Trisquel. In fact, I moved from Slackware to Debian, not only because of the wonderful packaging system, but also because of the association with the FSF. When Ubuntu and live CDs came around, it was easy to make that decision, and I was actually able to give a talk at which several other teachers installed Ubuntu on their school district-provided laptops. About two years ago, I was hired for a new job. I went over to the dark side about 2 years ago, and purchased a high end Mac, when I learned that I would be forced to use an extremely slow mac book for all school related computer work. The ease of inter-operability was amazing. Emacs was actually on the system---something that is not true of any GNU/Linux distro I know about! I could install my important GNU/Linux tools, but the line was blurred: maintenance was a gordion knot, and the quality of the hardware was shaky. The Operating System was fancy, but was engineered to prevent sharing. I installed Arch Linux, but eventually I built a much better machine to run GNU/Linux, and gave it to my wife. Adobe is a bad word. ADE is an grab for the soul of the digital library. I will take your remarks under advisement. It often seems that true Freedom is not as important to Americans anymore. I am moved by your remarkable statements. I will make a new effort to divest myself of DRM laden materials and proprietary software. I cannot afford to buy a different video card or wifi-adapter, or, worse, a different laptop. Thank you to the developers of Arch Linux. This distribution is leaps and bounds ahead of any other distro I have used. That is, while isolated bits of some other distributions are better, Arch Linux's stability and breadth of scope is unrivaled. Alan Davis On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 9:45 AM, Ralf Mardorf <silver.bullet@zoho.com> wrote:

On Sun, 26 Nov 2017 18:37:58 +0100, Guus Snijders wrote:

...

though I can't see any reason for autostarting wine

So your advice to create another user account seems to be more promising for troubleshooting.

-- $ pacman -Q linux{,-rt{,-cornflower,-pussytoes}}|awk '{print $2}' 4.14-2 4.13.13_rt5-1 4.11.12_rt16-1 4.14_rt1-1

-- [Fill in the blanks] The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...--- outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence. ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)