Avoiding Godhood
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Bob_Robertson Feb 18, 2007 7:04 AM EDT |
So, I've been thinking. Why would Mr. Torvalds, who knows his every move is scrutinized in the extreme, say such things that would obviously piss people off? I think he's trying to avoid Godhood. I remember a short story where, no matter how awful she was to herself, a woman could not get away from being a saint. Miracles, rains of roses, they really got in the way. One day, she gets a bumper sticker made up that says "Saint", and with a simple "sin of pride", she gets rid of all the annoying interferences in her and other peoples lives. Maybe, just maybe, Linus picked something to do that would make so many people ticked off, just a little bit, that they would stop elevating him to Godhood. That or he really doesn't like GNOME. I'm curious to see if he ever submits a patch to EMACS to make a "vi" mode. :^) |
| dinotrac Feb 18, 2007 10:21 AM EDT |
I don't know. I think he really doesn't like it. The patch submission is his response to "Put up or shut up" -- an even a logical response to the GNOME challenge, if you think about it. The GNOME folks offered up a challenge that he has no need to take --- he's happy with KDE. If they really want him to take the challenge, they should give his patches fair consideration. That would put the shoe plainly on the other foot. |
| Abe Feb 18, 2007 10:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:that they would stop elevating him to GodhoodI think Linus is probably more human (in the sense of making mistakes) than any of us but we don't get to see them. I am a consistent user of KDE and I like it better. It is one reason why I use PCLinuxOS and Kubuntu not Ubuntu. I briefly used GNOME when I was testing Red Had at one time and didn't like it. I am sure it has improved a lot lately but still, KDE is more to my taste. In my opinion, what Linus is trying to say is GNOME is not the best like its supporters & developers try to portray it and for them to step down from their high horse and take a look around. KDE is not just DM, it is a framework that has a long term plan which I don't see in GNOME. KDE guys developed and continue to develop this framework and you can see that in the latest creativity and innovations they are getting ready to be released in KDE 4.0. Some of these new features are almost not feasible to do in GNOME. That doesn't mean GNOME should go away, on the contrary. I advocate choice and competition. I think they are very important and integral part of FOSS development. I am sure others think otherwise. It is a their choice and to each his own. |
| jimf Feb 18, 2007 11:04 AM EDT |
Enough stupid diversionary cat fights going on without going back to the Gnome VS KDE one. That said, I agree with what Linus has been saying, and, as an Engineer, I like the way the man thinks.... and acts. As the hands down #1 programmer, developer, and Linux user, I think the he's earned the right to express his option of anything going on in the Linux world. That he's backed up his criticism with patches that (at least in his mind) correct the problem, and, clean up the code, certainly backs up his criticism. It's obvious to me that Linus could be a 'God' by just shutting his mouth. I'd say that, not only does he not want that, but that he couldn't play the role if he tried. |
| Abe Feb 18, 2007 11:56 AM EDT |
Quoting:Enough stupid diversionary cat fights going on without going back to the Gnome VS KDE one. It is a Free Country. People are entitled to say their opinions. What might seem stupid to some, might not be so stupid to others. By not listening to other opinions is being stupid. |
| jimf Feb 18, 2007 12:16 PM EDT |
> By not listening to other opinions is being stupid. True, but all to often that just becomes senseless bashing by both sides. While I personally agree with Linus, Linux is about your ability to choose whatever freaky interface you desire. |
| Abe Feb 18, 2007 12:44 PM EDT |
Quoting:but all to often that just becomes senseless bashing by both sides. True, I agree, but that doesn't mean we have to stop presenting good opinions just because of ignorance by some. I am sure you agree that good healthy debate is constructive and beneficial. We just have to use a special filter to screen the senseless ones. |
| swbrown Feb 18, 2007 1:14 PM EDT |
> So, I've been thinking. Why would Mr. Torvalds, who knows his every move is scrutinized in the extreme, say such things that would obviously piss people off? It's just Linus being Linus. If anything, you could say that fame's not changed him. ;) |
| devnet Feb 18, 2007 3:37 PM EDT |
No...I don't think it's just LInus...I think it's just that Gnome sux. :D |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 18, 2007 5:18 PM EDT |
One of the reasons that I like Debian is that there is both a KDE team and a GNOME team. The "distribution" doesn't care at all, it's entirely up to the individual. I have KDE and GNOME, or rather QT and GTK applications running in perfect harmony, even on my OLWM session. :^) As with everyone else, I, too, prefer one to the other. But it is a _personal_ choice. Linux: You don't have to use what Bill likes. |
| jimf Feb 18, 2007 7:38 PM EDT |
> QT and GTK applications running in perfect harmony Same here. I prefer the KDE GUI, but I like a lot of the GTK apps. |
| dcparris Feb 18, 2007 7:51 PM EDT |
You know, after all these years, I'm only just now leaning toward KDE. There was some specific issue, I think related to digital cameras, that pushed me in that direction. It may have been something else, but I think something that always "just worked" in Ubuntu needed additional tweaking in Debian's GNOME. KDE seemed better able to handle the issue. Frankly, though, I can still use either environment, along with Enlightenment or XFce, just fine. I guess I'm saying I just don't care that much about which one is better. As long as it isn't that outdated, legacy OS some folks seem to think is so great. |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 18, 2007 8:41 PM EDT |
Bob's original thesis in this thread is, I think, a subtle and wise psychological ploy to get others off one's case (so to speak): I sometimes think of it as "reducing expectations." I used to be a phone tech, and I thought of my intro (though I never actually said it) as, "Thanks for calling Reduced Expectations, how may I reduce your expectation of our product today?" However, the ploy does not always work in reality. An ex-significant other, despite my best attempts to reduce her expectations of me early on, still did the "pedestal thing" and was extremely disappointed when she was finally disabused of her fantasy. |
| dinotrac Feb 19, 2007 3:31 AM EDT |
Rev - Don't know what your issue was...but digikam has grown into a very nice app for working with digital cameras. |
| tracyanne Feb 19, 2007 3:45 AM EDT |
Come on, the GNOME Blokes deserved it. |
| DarrenR114 Feb 19, 2007 4:38 AM EDT |
tracyanne, everyone knows that GNOME is better than KDE - just not everyone likes to face reality ;-) (actually I do prefer GNOME over KDE - but that's because I prefer C over C++. It's all a matter of personal preference in my eyes.) |
| purplewizard Feb 19, 2007 7:59 AM EDT |
As a ploy I don't think it works because the general sense I get is people prefer KDE. So for it to be a subtle ploy he would have to be trying reverse psychology in that by damning Gnome people will flood to defend it. Of all the post I have seen it is roughly 10 - 20 to 1 against Gnome. But then I suspect most people that have an opinion are far from being the "my granny" of Gnome's targetting. I can compliment Gnome by saying yes it probably is the best desktop for my mum to use because of simplicity. But for me it has too many things missing which is Linus' position as I read it. |
| dcparris Feb 19, 2007 10:42 AM EDT |
Isn't digikam the KDE app? That's what worked. I'm betting the GNOME issue was more of a fluke or something. Maybe I didn't have libgphoto installed or something. I don't recall what it was. |
| dinotrac Feb 19, 2007 11:24 AM EDT |
>Isn't digikam the KDE app? Yes it is. My wife feels crippled when she doesn't have it -- especially if she has to hook to a Windows pc to get her pictures. |
| Abe Feb 19, 2007 11:30 AM EDT |
Quoting:Isn't digikam the KDE app? digikam is a KDE app. The capability to run KDE or GNOME applications on either one is the fruits of the great collaboration and coordination efforts by the developers of both. That is what is great about FOSS, interopreability. And it is not only on FOSS, but with non-homogenoussystems too. Well, unless MS doesn't want to inter-operate to make special deals and arrangements on their own monopolistic terms. |
| bigg Feb 19, 2007 11:45 AM EDT |
> My wife feels crippled when she doesn't have it My wife shuts down Windows and reboots into pclinux to use digikam. She couldn't figure out the XP nonsense, later tried pclinux - by herself - to see what would happen. She plugged the camera in, it recognized the camera by name, and she started up digikam. She very much prefers digikam to whatever it is that comes with XP. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 19, 2007 12:03 PM EDT |
Speaking of digikam, I've been wanting to buy my daughter one of those silly (and cheap) digital cameras, with Hello Kitty or some other sillyness, but they only come with Windows driver disks. I tried two different cameras, including the Hello Kitty one, and while both were seen as USB device, but not as a mountable thumb-drive kind of thing which is what I hoped for. Thanks for the digikam suggestion, I guess I'll try that. Lucky that Walmart and Radio Shack take returns so nicely, all I have to say is, "I run Linux." |
| Abe Feb 19, 2007 12:07 PM EDT |
What would be interesting is for every to name the DM(s) they use on this thread. |
| jimf Feb 19, 2007 12:24 PM EDT |
I use KDM rather than GDM because, as an Artist, I've noted that it renders better. I don't 'like' either interface as delivered. I think they're both butt ugly, and more than a little counter intuitive and disfunctional. Maybe KDE could use a few of Torvalds' patches too. I do think that KDE is easier for a former Windows user to transition to, while Gnome may be easier for Grandma, who has never used anything... For what that's worth. I use KDE because it I can adjust almost everything with minimal effort. Truthfully, If I have to, I can do the same things with Gnome. It's just 'a lot' more work. If you don't care about that, or leave the desktop pretty much as delivered, then I don't see a hell of a lot of difference. Both the GTK and QT camps put out some great apps, as well as some real losers. I run a mix of the best of both. I'm really glad to have both GTK and QT... As they say, competition makes for a better product. I can live with that. |
| dinotrac Feb 19, 2007 12:35 PM EDT |
>As they say, competition makes for a better product. Except for file dialogs, where GTK seems determined to define putrid. |
| jimf Feb 19, 2007 12:37 PM EDT |
> Except for file dialogs, where GTK seems determined to define putrid. Yep, I just filed another bug fix on one of those :D |
| jdixon Feb 19, 2007 12:48 PM EDT |
> What would be interesting is for every to name the DM(s) they use on this thread. XFCE by preference. I normally have both KDE and Gnome installed for testing purposes, and use them when required. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 19, 2007 1:17 PM EDT |
I started with OLWM, because that is what I was running on the SPARC-2 at NASA when I installed Linux in 1995. For various gaming reasons, that remained my only Linux machine, eventually a headless server that wrapped the Linux uptime counter by more than a year before the California government so screwed up the electrical power situation that it rebooted in a brown-out. In 2000, I tried various "mini" Linux systems that coexisted with Windows, and liked the KDE that came with DragonLinux. At the same time, I set up a RedHat system that came with GNOME, and thought it looked rather plain and pointless in comparison. I've used KDE ever since. Oh, but OLWM is still installed even on this gnarly super-duper laptop, because sometimes I don't want KDE to load everything on startup. Maybe I need to work on things, maybe I want to play an unstable game and not have it kill the entire KDE session, etc. I admit that I don't have GNOME WM installed at all, I even like KDM better because it provides a menu of installed Window Managers so I can pick among them. Unlike Neil Stephenson, I like booting into a graphical log-in window. |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 19, 2007 1:57 PM EDT |
>What would be interesting is for every to name the DM(s) they use on this thread. The straight answer: KDE, for the same reasons as Linus. The bent answer: I didn't use a DM on this thread; I used a web browser (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20061219 MultiZilla/1.8.3.0a Iceape/1.0.7 (Debian-1.0.7-3)) The pedantic answer: A DM, DE, WM, etc. are all different classes of software, but even those programmers knowledgeable of the difference mistake one for the other, and confuse we the users frequently. The inconsistency in usage is a barrier to learning Linux. Specifically, KDM/GDM/XDM are not programs I use personally ever, because there seems to be no (elegant) way to exit them back to the plain text console. So startx it is for me. |
| jimf Feb 19, 2007 2:14 PM EDT |
> DM, DE, WM, etc. are all different classes of software True, but for most users, That makes little practical difference. They don't want to be bothered, nor should they. |
| bigg Feb 19, 2007 2:40 PM EDT |
xfce, with a little gnome now and then. I hate stuff getting in my way. I set my computer up the way I like it and use it that way basically until I change distros or update my current distro. I seldom change my configuration. |
| swbrown Feb 19, 2007 4:55 PM EDT |
I stopped writing stuff for KDE a long time ago, as they just weren't headed in the direction I wanted to see it go in. It was more important for them to add features than fix broken features, and the way they handled bug fixing was simply the worst I've seen of any large project. The result was that with any KDE release, you were only one or two clicks from a highly obvious bug, like menu options that wouldn't work, etc.. GNOME was doing a more minimalistic approach where only things that actually worked would get included, and they were avoiding adding features just for the sake of adding features, reducing clutter and bloat. Fewer features, but I felt it was a better experience. It was also possible to port GNOME apps to uncooperative systems like Windows at the time, and the base C API made it much, much easier to generate language bindings. Also, I prefer LGPL libraries to GPL libraries, as it allows you to recommend the architecture to anyone, even proprietary people, which gets them involved and will likely lead to them improving the libraries. As an example of KDE's disastrous handling of bug fixing, I had filed a bug fix to an obvious bug in KNode re locking up when reading a message with multiple null bytes at the end (various Windows newsreaders would add them). The patch attached was a no-brainer, you could see just from the patch that it was fixing an obvious bug. It took 6 months, and many reminders sent to the dev lists, to eventually get it applied. It wasn't an isolated incident - more recently, some of the bugs I filed in 2001 are just now getting updated so I'm getting blast-from-the-past emails. The only project I've had worse experiences with re bug fixing is libsigcx, which took about 1.2 years and something like 20 emails to get a patch applied. As something to compare it to, look at how PHP handles bugs. They have several people that comb/prune the bugtracker (e.g., sniper@) and are quite fast to apply patches that fix things. You'll likely not have to wait more than a week to get something important in the tree. Mozilla is also pretty good, although they have many, many levels of bureaucracy, so it might take a couple weeks to go through all the people that have to approve it even if it's approved initially. |
| jimf Feb 19, 2007 5:13 PM EDT |
> The result was that with any KDE release, you were only one or two clicks from a highly obvious bug, I guess that's turned around now. I see a lot more bugs coming through with Gnome. KDE appears to be pretty clean. I will also say that, at least on my system, QT apps do run faster than GTK... Often noticeably so. |
| swbrown Feb 19, 2007 5:41 PM EDT |
> I will also say that, at least on my system, QT apps do run faster than GTK... Often noticeably so. It depends mostly on the author. Qt apps have a bit of a disadvantage due to the massively excessive symbol and relocation bloat g++ produces (the symbol visibility annotations in 4.1 aren't widely used yet), but then I do all my GLib/GTK stuff in C++ so I get burned regardless. :) QtE/Qtopia/Opie's significantly faster on embedded platforms, but it's at a severe disadvantage due to being stripped down and uncooperative with the framebuffer (you can't run GTK apps or other X apps if you use Qtopia - everything must use Qtopia). |
| jimf Feb 19, 2007 5:46 PM EDT |
Well, I'm no programmer, but, my point wasn't to dis Gnome, but rather to point out that both these projects have gone through bad patches. I do think that, over the long run, we all benefit by having the competition of both. |
| tracyanne Feb 21, 2007 4:08 AM EDT |
quote:: Of all the post I have seen it is roughly 10 - 20 to 1 against Gnome. But then I suspect most people that have an opinion are far from being the "my granny" of Gnome's targetting. I can compliment Gnome by saying yes it probably is the best desktop for my mum to use because of simplicity. But for me it has too many things missing which is Linus' position as I read it. ::quote When I set up a Linux box for My granny, and My Mum types, and offer them a choice of desktop, they invariably choose KDE. |
| dinotrac Feb 21, 2007 4:38 AM EDT |
tracyanne: My wife and my daughters (aged 7-20) all use KDE> |
| DarrenR114 Feb 21, 2007 7:00 AM EDT |
I personally don't like KDE because it looks too much like MS-Windows, and it's base libraries are done in C++. The machines I've tried it on (and I do try it every so often from LiveCD's) all run it dog slow. But then running GNOME under the same conditions on the same machines is also dog slow - but a little more responsive than KDE. I started out using KDE on Mandrake when Mandrake first came out. GNOME wasn't ready for general consumption at the time. I switched to GNOME when it was "1.0" because, in addition to the underlying C++, I didn't like the QT license which really was unfriendly for entry-market developers (the guys just starting out by striking out on their own.) The current licensing structure, which is now similar to MySQL's, is really not much of an improvement. Most new converts are more comfortable with a DE that is more similar to the MS-Windows DE that they're leaving behind. So I expect that such users will quite often pick KDE over GNOME when given a choice. Personally, I'm intending to give fluxbox a spin when I find myself with a new laptop that I can afford to wipe (should be soon) because I'm finding both KDE and GNOME to be a little heavy in the overhead. |
| techiem2 Feb 21, 2007 8:56 AM EDT |
Yay for fluxbox (of course, my friends all think I'm nuts, what with no icons and all)! Personally, I generally gravitate more towards gnome than KDE on the occasion I look at them. Though I must say the KDE setup on pclos is fairly nice. I have that setup on mom's comp. |
| tracyanne Feb 21, 2007 12:40 PM EDT |
I'm quite like XFce, especially the small footprint aspects of it, but it hasn't offered me quite enough to switch from KDE yet. quote:; Though I must say the KDE setup on pclos is fairly nice. ::quote I'm pretty sure the default install for PCLinuxOS is very similar to what I do when I install Mandriva, it is an amalgum of KDE and GNOME applications with a KDE GUI, it certainly looks that way on the test machine i"m running it on. I find most of the Linuxes that offer a KDE only desktop have the same unfinished feel that the ones that offer a GNOME only desktop have. |
| dcparris Feb 21, 2007 12:49 PM EDT |
I have discovered one pretty cool feature of GNOME - setting up a remote CUPS printer. As long as you've got the server config'd correctly, GNOME's printer setup automagically recognizes the printer(s). In KDE, you still have to select the print system. At least, that's how it worked for me on the two Debian Etch boxes I setup. GNOME might do that for dumb people - I don't know. But it is pretty convenient. ;-) |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 21, 2007 4:15 PM EDT |
"Specifically, KDM/GDM/XDM are not programs I use personally ever, because there seems to be no (elegant) way to exit them back to the plain text console." I find that very interesting. KDM has a menu, on which I choose the window manager I want, as well as having a "console" option that immediately switches to the tty1 console. If no one logs into the console in a minute or two, it goes back to the KDM login screen, as well as doing so if that console session is logged out of. With that and CTRL-ALT-(F1-F6), what isn't elegant? |
| devnet Feb 21, 2007 7:24 PM EDT |
Quoting:I have discovered one pretty cool feature of GNOME - setting up a remote CUPS printer. As long as you've got the server config'd correctly, GNOME's printer setup automagically recognizes the printer(s). In KDE, you still have to select the print system. http://www.pclinuxonline.com/wiki/AddPrinter It's rather simple in some KDE distros isn't it? :P |
| dcparris Feb 21, 2007 8:37 PM EDT |
Oh, setting up local CUPS printers has never been a problem, regardless of what distro I use (Red Hat 6/7, SUSE 8-10, Ubuntu, Debian, etc.). It's the networked CUPS printer that I was referring to. In KDE I had to choose the CUPS system, but in GNOME, I just opened the printer config utility. One step ain't that much difference, imo. But it was both nice and a surprise. Again, it might be aimed at Linus' "stupid" people, but frankly, it's also kind of convenient. |
| jimf Feb 21, 2007 10:31 PM EDT |
> It's the networked CUPS printer Yeah, I caught that, still working on getting one of mine going. I don't see much difference except the KDE looks slicker. They both more or less work.... when cups works ;-) Next peer to peer networking between the Linux boxes... I do so hate black arts. Fortunately, I'm good at them. |
| tracyanne Feb 21, 2007 11:19 PM EDT |
quote:: I have discovered one pretty cool feature of GNOME - setting up a remote CUPS printer. As long as you've got the server config'd correctly, GNOME's printer setup automagically recognizes the printer(s). In KDE, you still have to select the print system. ::quote I use the Mandriva Control Panel -> Hardware -> Printers, it always recognises the Printer, and askes to install the drivers, If I don't already have them installed. I find the CUPS dialogs in the KDE Control Panel rather confusing, and I would expect that a Linux newbie would have a lot of trouble setting up a printer on a straight KDE ased machine. |
| tuxchick Feb 22, 2007 11:26 AM EDT |
"I have discovered one pretty cool feature of GNOME - setting up a remote CUPS printer." That's a CUPS feature, not a Gnome or KDE feature. Ubuntu turns off networked printing by default, which is odd and annoying, but there they are. |
| dcparris Feb 22, 2007 4:24 PM EDT |
Oh. I assumed it was GNOME, since simply launching the utility brought up the printers, whereas in KDE, I had to actually go so far as to choose the actual print system. I thought GNOME's printer manager was auto-detecting the CUPS system. I'm using Debian on all the machines, except for one or two. Anyway, it was just one step easier in GNOME than in KDE. Not a big deal to me, but there it is. Anyway, thanks for clearing up where the feature actually resides. :-) |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 26, 2007 8:24 AM EDT |
I use GNOME and mostly GTK apps. Someone above commented that GNOME looked boring. I like that. GNOME gets out of my way. KDE has a bit too much annoyances for my reason (one of them being the idiocy that most application names start with a K. Grrr). I do intend to test the next PCLinusOS to see how things are faring in the KDE camp, but I'll stick to GNOME for now. |
| dinotrac Feb 26, 2007 8:37 AM EDT |
>KDE camp We have a camp? Cool. I want to go! |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 26, 2007 9:49 AM EDT |
>With that and CTRL-ALT-(F1-F6), what isn't elegant? Sorry, Bob, I rather thought I might not have been clear enough on that point. To me, running a shell over X using Ctrl-Alt-Fx is not the same as exiting the GUI. X plus the DM are still running; nothing has actually exited from mem. In fact, more has started in that case. To get where I want to go (using my mem and CPU for computing rather than for eye candy), the only way I know how is to kill all the X and DM processes manually after Ctrl-Alt-Fx, or not load the DM in the first place. This is my "inelegence" peeve. Once a DM is started, there is no way to totally get rid of it and its child processes cleanly short of reboot: Even Ctrl-Alt-Backspace just respawns the DM. In the MS world (NT-based) eschewing the GUI can't be done at all in a meaningful way. At least with GNU/Linux there is some way to accomplish it. |
| DarrenR114 Feb 26, 2007 10:36 AM EDT |
Alladin_sane - Have you tried then executing "init 3" from the command line? That'll get rid of the DM without reboot. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 26, 2007 10:46 AM EDT |
"To me, running a shell over X using Ctrl-Alt-Fx is not the same as exiting the GUI. X plus the DM are still running; nothing has actually exited from mem. In fact, more has started in that case." Ah. You missunderstand. The consoles tty1-6 are already running. They are started at boot. Debian starts 6, with X as 7. How many does your distro start? root 2818 0.3 4.7 27800 24516 tty7 SLs+ Feb25 4:40 /usr/bin/X -br -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-YlJSuS root 2849 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty1 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1 root 2850 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty2 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2 root 2853 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty3 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3 root 2856 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty4 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4 root 2859 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty5 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty5 root 2860 0.0 0.0 1572 492 tty6 Ss+ Feb25 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6 bob 30562 0.0 0.1 1956 632 pts/1 R+ 14:29 0:00 grep tty The reason that I like KDM is its menu. I like being able to select window manager, and I like the menu item for "console login" which takes X out, as low as it can go. CTRL-ALT-F7 does not find a DM running. X is, short of killing the DM, completely asleep and unused. I agree that not having X start at all is the most efficient in terms of memory and CPU. That's why I don't put KDM or GDM or whatever on any server. But I do not think the minimal RAM and little-to-none CPU that KDM takes when it puts itself to sleep is much of a loss. This is, after all, a general purpose desktop which is being told, this time, to run without the GUI. It's rather a trade off isn't it?. You can make yourself type "startx" every time you want the GUI, or tell the login screen to shut itself _almost_ completely down and use only the console on those occasions where you want a minimal system. I guess it all depends on what you want to call "overhead". I prefer a little bit of lost RAM every once in a while, making the machine do the work, to my having to type extra every other time. Most of my desktop system's time is spent with the GUI active. There is also a server over behind the TV, hooked by wire to the router, which has neither a display attached nor GUI, nor keyboard or mouse. It just sits and runs and does what I tell it to do through SSH. It used to be the router, too. As you say, elegant. It and the desktop use exactly the same software repositories, the difference is that I have total control over what either one runs. On that point you and I could not be in greater agreement. |
| DarrenR114 Feb 26, 2007 11:01 AM EDT |
If you don't want a DM to start - then in your init script, set your runlevel to "3" instead of the default "5" (default that is with Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE). If you want to shut it off without messing with your init script, then execute "init 3" from the command line (as root). If you want to restart it without rebooting, then execute "init 5". Be aware, Ubuntu has diverged from this well-established standard with "Edgy Eft" and is now doing something called "Upstart". Personally, I think this was a stupid move - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. |
| tuxchick Feb 26, 2007 11:21 AM EDT |
Darren, the Upstart project is actually pretty interesting. Check out this article, which I modestly recommend, and the Upstart wiki page has more information:
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/... Where they messed up, as they always do, was not drawing more attention to the change, like putting a placeholder in /etc/inittab with a bit of information. Ubuntu is absolutely the worst distribution for documenting changes. They have release notes on ubuntu.com, but just try to find the damned things. I guess all the hype links don't leave room for useful stuff. Fortunately, my google-fu is powerful: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/releasenotes/610 |
| jdixon Feb 26, 2007 11:26 AM EDT |
> my google-fu is powerful. We bow before your magnificence, oh wise one. :) Link marked for future reference. |
| DarrenR114 Feb 26, 2007 11:44 AM EDT |
TC - Upstart is interesting, but I don't see anything about running on different "runlevels". For most people this won't make a difference, but I know it's saved my bacon more than once. Edited: There is a small blurb in the ReplacementInit wiki about preserving the compatibility with the sysvinit so that "init 3" will supposedly work like before. I'm not using Edgy Eft, so I'll defer to others about whether or not this holds true. |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 26, 2007 12:22 PM EDT |
DarrenR114-
>set your runlevel to "3" instead of the default "5" Yes, that is what I do, in RH-based dists. For any lurkers that aren't following, the file is /etc/inittab and the line is "id:x:initdefault:" where x may be 0-6. All newbies should set x to 6. Wait, ignore that last bit. The Ubuntu conversation is interesting: In Debian only "2" is a legit runlevel to use the system, last I read. The (extremely elegant) 3/5 trick does not work in Debian-based dists' I'm told, unless those dists have diverged from The Path. Bob_Robertson- >Ah. You missunderstand. The consoles tty1-6 are already running. OK, I'm just weird: I spend way too much time watching ps, top, tcpdump, iostat, etc. Maybe it has to do with my job. Oh wait, it all has to do with jobs. :-) Compare a Debian Sid system in GUI (the one I'm using now): ps ax|wc -l 152 And another Debian Sid system launched with no DM, logged in to a text mode console: ps ax|wc -l 125 This is the thing: Those 27 other processes represent what I don't want or need in non-GUI mode: Processes that are supporting multimedia, and polling removable devices, processes that are busily rendering and updating a graphical desktop that I'm not looking at, etc, etc. Most importantly, processes that can cause resource conflicts that I don't need. The exercise is "headache reduction" or KISS. MS Windows, X, KDE, GNOME, etc. are the greatest KISS violators I know. It is also a form of perfectionism that I get to indulge myself personally far more than professionally. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 26, 2007 12:58 PM EDT |
Can't fault your choice in distributions. Hmmm... Both up-to-date Debian Sid: server$ ps ax|wc -l 45 laptop$ ps ax|wc -l 109 Golly, you're running a LOT of stuff I'm not running. That laptop number is what I'm doing right now, with KDE in full bloom, 6 tabs in Konsole, 4 tabs in Konqueror, stuff in the system tray, HPLIP, Kmail, xpdf, hald and logged in with BitTornado running on the server too. You do know that if you're not logged in to the GUI, those processes... "that are supporting multimedia, and polling removable devices, processes that are busily rendering and updating a graphical desktop that I'm not looking at, etc, etc..." are not running. Even hald, the removable hardware detection daemon, is running so low that they all show 0.0 on my ps aux right now. But then, I also had Win95 down to two running processes, one of which was "explorer", and it was very reliable and fast. You and I are doing very different things with our systems, obviously. It would be interesting to know how you, with your drive for simplicity, and I with little to no effort in that direction, still end up with such different numbers of processes running. Hmm... |
| jimf Feb 26, 2007 1:02 PM EDT |
> hald, the removable hardware detection daemon, is running so low that they all show 0.0 on my ps aux right now. Lol, hal is an abortion anyway. I've just removed it. |
| tuxchick Feb 26, 2007 1:02 PM EDT |
Runlevels 2-5 are meant to be user-configurable. Different distributions use them differently. Red Hat has one way, Debian another, and Slackware yet another. Don't touch 0,1, or 6 unless you really really REALLY know what you're doing. Debian defaults to runlevel 2, which is either a console or X windows depending on what you selected during installation. (shameless plug, my excellent Linux Cookbook tells all about these things.) The init command still works on Edgy Eft. So far Upchuck has only replaced /etc/inittab. |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 26, 2007 1:06 PM EDT |
>You and I are doing very different things with our systems, obviously. It would be interesting to know how you, with your drive for simplicity, and I with little to no effort in that direction, still end up with such different numbers of processes running. Hmm... Point conceded. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 26, 2007 1:09 PM EDT |
I think hald has some dependencies that cause trouble. I like putting in a CD and having a "open in new window?" option come up. I think it's an improvement for a single-user system like this laptop. Unless that's not hald, which I guess I'll find out some day. It's not in the way. My desktop install has consisted of "throw everything on that KDE has", then add more stuff as needed. :^) Hald came with it, so there it is. Debian's dependency resolution works quite well for such "kill them all and let God sort them out" kinds of installs. But I do _NOT_ like "tasksel". If tasksel had a "full KDE desktop" or "full GNOME desktop" option, I might use it, but it doesn't. However, I did find out over the weekend that my problems with the hp-toolbox in hplip was because hplip and hpoj _conflict_. Oh sure, it prints just fine, but xsane comes up with two different entries at the same time for the same printer, one from hplip and the other from hpoj. So, since the hp-toolbox is in hplip package, I purged the other and now scanning works better. Silly. But it does demonstrate that I'm not making much of an effort to minimize the system overheard on this wondervaio. |
| hkwint Feb 26, 2007 1:16 PM EDT |
Counting processes isn't the best manner to detect bloat.
For example, Firefox opens 9 procs, but Konqueror opens 5, both do about the same.
SVChost at a WinXP is a proc-container, which may contain subprocesses (It took me more than five year to find out, but anyway). It may contain 18 virusus/malware processes, but only between one to four svchosts appear in the process list. No, Linux isn't Windows, but it just doesn't mean that much. BTW my box only runs 60 procs (ps|wc) in GUI mode, of which 8 are Firefox. Not bad, eh? Usability on the other hand is a whole different story. |
| jimf Feb 26, 2007 1:23 PM EDT |
> I think hald has some dependencies that cause trouble. I like putting in a CD and having a "open in new window?" option come up. I think it's an improvement for a single-user system like this laptop. Unless that's not hald, which I guess I'll find out some day. It's not in the way. My bitch with hal is that it pretty much eliminates a standard mount of removable media, and, between hal and udev defalts all the removable media to 'system://dev/virtual file' or some such garbage. Although n00bs are probably gonna love it, that's just unacceptable to me. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 26, 2007 1:31 PM EDT |
"Although n00bs are probably gonna love it, that's just unacceptable to me." Yeah, there's a decades-long-standard /mnt directory for a reason. |
| swbrown Feb 27, 2007 6:24 PM EDT |
The issue with hal as installed on pretty much all systems is that it mounts USB sticks without sync,dirsync options. The 'standard way' of using a USB stick is to copy files to it, and pull it out as soon as the copy completes, no unmounting required, as people do in Windows. Net result is people using Linux often corrupt their USB sticks. They really should be mounted sync,dirsync unless specifically configured otherwise by the user (an experienced user might trade off having to manually unmount with faster access times). |
| jimf Feb 27, 2007 6:45 PM EDT |
> They really should be mounted sync,dirsync They are here :) |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 28, 2007 9:25 AM EDT |
" sync,dirsync" is a great ticket to open. I couldn't agree more. What's the command to tell? Since it's not in fstab, I don't know how to find it. Since my USB mount/unmount experience goes way back before hal, I am always paranoid about unmounting the USB before removing it. Making entries in /etc/fstab by hand has given me some good habits. The memory card reader that I have has two LEDs, one of which actually shows the mount status. When I umount the card, or more usually use the KDE "safely remove" option on the card's desktop icon, it will go out. _Very_ nice to have that visual confirmation. It also blinks while reading/writing, so I can watch its progress. Almost as lazy as a Windows user! Oh Dear! |
| Aladdin_Sane Feb 28, 2007 11:55 AM EDT |
>What's the command to tell? I think it is a reference to mount. man mount -> Options -> -o -> sync, dirsync. States sync All I/O to the file system should be done synchronously. dirsync All directory updates within the file system should be done synchronously. This affects the following system calls: creat, link, unlink, symlink, mkdir, rmdir, mknod and rename. man mount -> Options states Options are specified with a -o flag followed by a comma sepa- rated string of options. Some of these options are only useful when they appear in the /etc/fstab file. The following options apply to any file system that is being mounted (but not every file system actually honors them - e.g., the sync option today has effect only for ext2, ext3 and ufs) So these should be available to specify in /etc/fstab as I read it. |
| jimf Feb 28, 2007 12:13 PM EDT |
This is pretty good for understanding fstab : http://www.humbug.org.au/talks/fstab/fstab.html Also, 'lshw' is a wonderful utility for finding the device names for usb and other devices to add to your fstab. |
| jezuch Feb 28, 2007 1:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:The 'standard way' of using a USB stick is to copy files to it, and pull it out as soon as the copy completes, My boss was a bit surprised when I explained to him why his files sometimes disappeared from his USB stick after copying them on it... |
| hkwint Feb 28, 2007 2:39 PM EDT |
Why put it in fstab when you can use AutoFS?
AutoFS is especially great when you combine it with udev-rulewriting, but anyway, here my AutoFS misc file: dvdr -fstype=iso9660,ro :/dev/hda dvd -fstype=iso9660,ro :/dev/hdb mp3 -fstype=vfat,rw,noauto,gid=10,uid=100,users :/dev/sdc1 This makes directories on the fly (note my non-root user owns all files on the mp3-usb-stick), and especially, AutoFS has a command to automatically unmount not used filesystems: alias rem="sudo /usr/bin/killall -USR1 automount" Here's the sudo line which makes sure my 'rem' commando doesn't ask for a password, because of sudo: Cmnd_Alias AUTOMNT= /usr/bin/killall -USR1 automount kwint ALL = NOPASSWD: AUTOMNT So, if I think the transfer is done, or I don't need my DVD mounted anymore, I just type 'rem', and then mount -l to check. |
| jimf Feb 28, 2007 2:52 PM EDT |
> Why put it in fstab when you can use AutoFS? Cause some of us prefer fstab mounting... |
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