[arch-general] Linux 3.9.2-1-ARCH cures blank screen

[Joaquin Villanova]

On 05/13/13 08:15, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Mon, 13 May 2013 00:53:17 +0200, Whiskers 
> <catwheezel at operamail.com> wrote:
>> The blank screen I first reported in January with Linux-3.7.3-1-i686 
>> seems
>> to have been cured by the latest update to Linux-3.9.2-1-i686 (and/or
>> other updates that have happened at the same time).  (Using the nouveau
>> graphics driver).
>>
>> But the desktop and mouse settings in XFCe4 aren't all working.
>
> Are you sure that this is caused by the kernel and/or graphics driver? 
> I'm a Xfce only user for a long time and experience it as a PITA. If I 
> would know another DE, that would be similar near to the wanted work 
> flow and that would be less odd, I would switch the DE.
>
> It's "normal" that lot of options are broken and reporting them to 
> upstream as a bug, only does lead to flame.
>
> However, what exactly doesn't work? The default buttons and wheel 
> settings should work as expected. Even while there's lot of very bad 
> code for desktop stuff, a lot of, if not all default settings should 
> work as expected. Customized settings at least often need to be 
> manually restored after package updates.
>
> The latest updates for Xfce on Arch where annoying, I e.g. had to 
> switch from a .svg to a .png for the menu icon, because the .svg I 
> used for a long time, can't be used anymore. But there are also very 
> serious issues, I for example had to remove gvfs, because it does make 
> external drives spin down and up again and again. The menu is a 
> complete mess and it can't be fixed with Alacarte or other menu 
> editors, it only can be done without such a tool.
>
> FWIW, I'm using the open source ATI and the kernel-rt from AUR on 64 
> bit architecture. Sometimes I use a NVIDIA on the same machine and 
> experienced the nouveau driver as better working, unfortunately the 
> graphics can have impact to real-time audio abilities so I sometimes 
> prefer to use an ATI.
>
I've got a mobility radeon (rv620) chip and I've had a ton of problems 
with xfce. I was not using any login manager and xfce was always 
crashing the X session and getting me to tty, it was horrible (far from 
stable IMHO).

@Whiskers maybe custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/   profiles could help you  
with mouse/keyboard  issues, i have to do it once in a chromium OS 
laptop and it solved the issues just fine. I felt more comfortable with 
lxde/openbox i found it more solid than xfce.