[arch-general] Arch is ummnn different: my 1st installation: tried to install xfce...OOPS!

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Mar 15, Damien Churchill did say:

> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide is always a good
> place to start.

Yeah, I guess maybe I woulda if only my brain hadn't run out of steam. Now
that I've looked a little closer at it than the quick glance I did
pre-install I've gotta agree, I shoulda started there...

It would appear that on Mar 15, Ananda Samaddar did say:

> The wiki is your friend:

When your right... Your right! Now that I've looked a little closer, I have
to admit that the wiki (at least the one for Arch Linux) appears to be
overflowing with good stuff that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't notice.

> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce4
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox

And thanks for the additional links :) I couldn't ask for better.

> you can use Lynx to view these in the console:
> 
> pacman -S lynx

Whoa! It's been so long since I used lynx that I kinda forgot about it. I
didn't give up on it easy though. It's just that so much of the web is
specifically designed for graphical browsers. But I suppose that I should
have realized that wiki pages tend to be formatted properly. And looking 
at Arch's wiki with lynx is, well, beautiful... I guess lynx is back in my
vocabulary. 

It would appear that on Mar 15, Jeffrey Parke did say:

>  Have you read the beginners guide? It's a great help for times like these,
> I'll post it below.  Well what you wanna do now is to install the xorg group
> (pacman -S xorg) then the xfce group (pacman -S xfce4). Then move the .xinitrc
> file to your home folder (cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc/ /home/user/.xinitrc); edit
> this file to so that the line with startxfce4 is uncommented (in other words
> has a '#' in front of it. Finally, run 'startx'
> 
> But do read the beginners guide, it is a very nice page that details all of
> these steps and more.
> 

Thanks, for the info. Incidentally,  I am familiar with using startx. But I wouldn't have
thought to look in /etc/skel for a sample .xinitrc with initialization details for the
most recent desktop installed. Does that also happen when other desktop/"window managers"
such as e17 or kde are installed?

While I spend most of my computer time inside some GUI desktop... I always prefer
to boot to a console and use startx when and if I'm ready. I'll likely wind up
starting XFCE with a script that if I select xfce will do a:

cp ~/xintrc-xfce ~/.xinitrc && startx


It would appear that on Mar 15, Guus Snijders did say:

> Actually, you should /remove/ the '#' from the start of that line... ;)

It would appear that on Mar 15, Jeffrey Lynn Parke Jr. did say:

> that's exactly what I said, just wanted to make sure he new what a comment
> was.

Actually THAT I do understand. But I'm guessing you get more refugees from other
GUI configured distros that don't than do... I always did think it was dumb to
replace "well commented" human readable config files with GUI only configs.
Especially when a GUI can just as easily be written to parse & modify or at least
rewrite such a file as to hide all the settings away someplace where you can't edit
them by hand. But from what I've seen of Arch so far I think I may just be
preaching to the choir...

It would appear that on Mar 15, Ond?ej Ku?era did say:

> I don't know much about xfce, being a KDE user, but start by looking at
> /var/log/pacman.log. It should tell you what packages actually were installed
> or which errors occured.

Thanks... Just had a peek at the log, and evidently the error wasn't significant
enough to be mentioned there. And all it says about xfdesktop is:

[2010-03-15 01:29] installed xfdesktop (4.6.1-1)


> Or for a basic troubleshooting you could try a terminal-based browser, such as
> links. It's not much, but at least ArchLinux wiki will be perfectly readable.

Yeah, since "ArchLinux wiki" is evidently so well designed for text based browsers
I think I'll go with lynx (for nostalgic reasons) And I will do so not only
because I haven't got a GUI up on Arch yet, But because the test I just ran
from my PCLinuxOS install tells me that it's actually easier on the eyes
to read ArchLinux's wiki with lynx than with opera... Whoda thunk it?

It would appear that on Mar 15, Peter Cannon did say:

> You don't need to understand the *Order* in Arch either?

Good! Since pacman is supposed to resolve dependencies I hadn't thought I'd
have to until installing the xfdesktop, didn't pull in enough of it's
dependencies to run it... But armed with the wiki links above I'm sure I'll
figure out what I did wrong.

> > I installed mc and vim without a problem. Then I thought it would be nice
> > if I could get a desktop up.
 
> Well it would those are non GUI apps as you know with your opensuse ect experience.

Yeah they (like alpine {my chosen mail client}) don't "require" a GUI to run. But I've
yet to find a "GUI" tool that I like to use instead of any of them. I suppose I would
survive if I absolutely had to use a different email client, But I'd really be lost
without vim & mc...  

> > I did a:
> > 
> > pacman -Si xfce|less 
> > 
> > and looked for a package that might get me to a minimal desktop I could work with.
> > I thought maybe xfdesktop...
> > 
> > pacman -S xfdesktop
 
> Why have you done this? If you look at the 'man' page you will see
> http://linux.die.net/man/1/xfdesktop
> 
> xfdesktop manages the desktop itself in the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment.
> 
> You should have done pacman -S xfce4

You see, that's what I meant by knowing "what order I need to install which packages"...
When I searched the output of the "pacman -Ss xface" I was looking for
something resembling a meta-package that was designed to pull in
everything needed to run xfce, Like using:

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop 

on a Ubuntu base system or,

apt-get install task-XFCE

on PCLiniuxOS...

Not actually knowing the names of all the components of XFCE, xfdesktop
sounded like a possible candidate to me.

> By the sound of it you've only installed part of the desktop environment.
> 
> > More to the point: Will I need to figure out how to uninstall xfdesktop to resolve
> > the error?
> 
> No.

Good!
> You need to do as others have suggested and read the beginners guide
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide especially the "Setting up
> X" section.

Yeah, woulda, coulda, shoulda, but didn't. In my defense I can only say
that the one time (pre-install) that I looked at the beginners guide, 
I had already peeked at:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide

And the first several screenfuls of the beginners guide's text was on the
same topic, and didn't seem as easy to boil down to the extract I almost
needlessly typed and printed..., 

" At # :
/arch/setup

Follow menu in order...

Choose "Manually Partition" [ uses cfdisk :) ]

Good it will let me tell it where to install grub "

To that I pasted in the section from the install guide about pacman
commands...

By the time I saw that error message, my brain was tired. I rebooted into
one of my other linux, signed up for the list, & composed my help request
while I could still remember what I'd done. Then I went the heck to bed.
I was certainly pleased with all the kind replies I found the next day. 
And not a one that felt like I was being hit with an RTFM... This tells me
a lot about the people here. I thank all of you for being so helpful. And I'll
try not to abuse this nice list. But sooner or later I'm sure to wind up with
another case of brain flatulence that'll have me asking more stupid questions.
Hopefully not so often as to become a pest.

It would appear that on Mar 15, Linas did say:

> Looks like xfdesktop packages doesn't specify some of its dependancies (which
> is probably provided in the xfce4 group).
> 
> http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=xfce4 should also include that there's a
> group with that name.
> I don't think it was a bad expectation from his part, looking at pacman -Ss
> xfce output. And even then, it could have worked, would xfdesktop have taken as
> dependancies the whole desktop.

Thanks for pointing that out. Still it looks like if I'd have read the whole beginners
guide first, I wouldn't have been as likely to make this mistake. Probably
all I needed was to start with "xorg" then move on to "xfce4" But I'll read
"http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce4" before I resume the process as
well.

It does look like getting Arch Linux configured the way I need it is going
to take a bit more work than I'm used to. But if the "rolling release" part
of what I've read about it means I won't have to recreate my personal user
environment (heavily modified keyboard shortcuts etc...) every 6 months or
so just to keep up to date, then I figure it'll be more than worth the effort.

-- 
|   ---   ___
|   <0>   <->     Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|       ^              J(tWdy)P
|    ~\___/~      <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>
Thanks again to all of you!