[arch-general] GDM/Lightdm and/or Gnome will not start

[Alan E. Davis]

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 at 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
>



-- 
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The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
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view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.

             ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)