On 12/01/2009 09:52 AM, Larry Stotler wrote:

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Egbert Eich wrote:

...

The Future of SaX2 ==================

Having used S.u.S.E. since v5.3, I have always appreciate SaX2. And I also don't agree with the direction that X.org has taken in regards to displays. This works fine on an LCD(which is definitely becoming more common) so that the display is at it's native resolution, but it doesn't work as well for CRTs or for setting up multiple displays sometimes. Even on my dual 19" CRTS on my desktop, I set them to 1024x768. I have 2 for a reason.

However, if the tools in KDE& Gnome are able to set the displays up properly(which never worked in the past since SaX2 was the default config tool), then I'm personally not sure that SaX2 is really needed. I haven't really had time to play with 11.2 yet so I don't know how well it works, but I did have to change my son's 19" CRT down because he complained it was too high, and I was glad that SaX2 was there. HOWEVER, I didn't look in the KDE4 settings to see if it was available.

So, I guess one thing that should be considered is if the KDE& Gnome config tools are up to snuff.....

Thanx

OK Question will xorg's autoconfig be able to setup multiply resolution using <ctrl><alt><+/->? SaX2 and xorg.conf could do that. -- 73 de Donn Washburn 307 Savoy Street Email:" n5xwb@comcast.net " Sugar Land, TX 77478 LL# 1.281.242.3256 Ham Callsign N5XWB HAMs : " n5xwb@arrl.net " VoIP via Gizmo: bmw_87kbike / via Skype: n5xwbg BMW MOA #: 4146 - Ambassador " http://counter.li.org " #279316 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 11:59:11AM -0600, Donn Washburn wrote:

...

Thanx

OK Question will xorg's autoconfig be able to setup multiply resolution using <ctrl><alt><+/->? SaX2 and xorg.conf could do that.

This will only work - of at all - if you add the modes you want to a config file explicitely. Using this mechanism your root window size (the size of your desktop) was always kept the same. When your screen resolution was lower you got panning. A lot of people didn't like this. With xrandr you can use a desktop tool - or the command line program 'xrandr' (should you still be an fvwm2 user) - to change the desktop resolution and size. If you want panning - this is supported by xrandr, too (added by Matthias Hopf). Frederico extended the gnome desktop tool to support panning, too AFAIK, thus you should be able to get the old behavior back - just not using those hot keys. However the desktop tool could implement a hot key mechanism itself, which would allow to configure your favorite modes inside the tools and toggle between them. This would have to be implemented though - any volunteers? ;) Cheers, Egbert. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 01/12/09 20:57, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* jdd [12-01-09 15:31]:

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Le 01/12/2009 16:32, Egbert Eich a écrit :

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Yet, the decision was driven by what Novell sees its business needs and thus is not up for discussion.

was there any discussion in the community about this?

Yes, earlier today an announcement was made about a business decision.

...

I think it very unfriendly for Novell to make so hudge change without asking the rest of the community. May be some other Novell tasks could be less important for openSUSE than SaX2...

You must remember that Novell does *not* work for the "Community", but donates time and money toward bettering the "Community" Project. Their decision is no different than you choosing to use another distro, except it was based on their current business conditions.

...

I just want to say that Sax2 is mandatory now. On 11.2, changing a monitor for a worst one, with less resolution, let the user without solution and without screen (I had this on two very different computers)

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

Then the "Community" must pick up the pieces. I cannot believe that Novell will not continue to support SaX2 for SLE11, so it *should* not dissappear toooo soon.

Guys, the landscape has changed. If you should need to change screen sizes, "xrandr" is the tool, so SaX2 is no great loss. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 01/12/09 17:57, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

Then the "Community" must pick up the pieces. I cannot believe that Novell will not continue to support SaX2 for SLE11,

SLED 11 contains sax, dunno if it is "officially" supported though.

so it *should* not dissappear toooo soon.

It wont disappear, I think Egbert's email is pretty clear in the sense that it refers to the _future_ of sax. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 2009/12/01 21:29 (GMT+0100) jdd composed:

I just want to say that Sax2 is mandatory now. On 11.2, changing a monitor for a worst one, with less resolution, let the user without solution and without screen (I had this on two very different computers)

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

Have you ever tried 'X -configure'? If it fails for you, you could file an upstream bug, since it's built into X and shouldn't depend on Novell staff to make work. -- " We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/01/2009 05:15 PM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

2009/12/1 Felix Miata :

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On 2009/12/01 21:29 (GMT+0100) jdd composed:

...

...

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

Have you ever tried 'X -configure'? If it fails for you, you could file an upstream bug, since it's built into X and shouldn't depend on Novell staff to make work.

I just deleted the SaX2 X11/xorg.conf file I made out of habit, started up X, got default high resolution and then found the KDE Display dialog, which worked satisfactorily. Presumably GNOME has got an equivalent.

The thing I don't like about Desktop based utilities, is that they may well leave other X environments out in the cold.

Well that's the thing - both the KDE and GNOME interfaces are just front-ends for the xrandr interface. Check out xrandr --help. - -Jeff - -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksVleoACgkQLPWxlyuTD7K3fgCggDDHd1ZzLFlMTS9943vCZlUv 5vUAn2PipB/ute4Aju/eS2G8dLO+R86U =8LUK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/02/2009 06:47 AM, Egbert Eich wrote:

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 05:17:14PM -0500, Jeff Mahoney wrote:

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Well that's the thing - both the KDE and GNOME interfaces are just front-ends for the xrandr interface.

libXrandr, not the command line tool, yes.

Yep. I meant the extension, not the tool. :) - -Jeff - -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksWhwUACgkQLPWxlyuTD7JQSACgiSNcEu70jpN+ZER5vA2PSsCh J0gAnAk1BO99hJhH7So3x4cOgLZDKD2r =ThGz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 01/12/2009 22:51, Felix Miata a écrit :

...

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

Have you ever tried 'X -configure'? If it fails for you, you could file an upstream bug, since it's built into X and shouldn't depend on Novell staff to make work.

don't know about that. Listen... I had years to learn how sax2 works, you can't expect me to change all without notice. Was stuck by this problem 200 miles from home at my daugther's house and found the solution only back home. I simply had a computer with no display and sax2 (without -a) displaying a test screen perfect without keyboard nor mouse, so without solution. https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=557592 (closed as resolved, I don't know why, but my email was wrong so I may have missed questions. - this mail problem is fixed now) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 01/12/09 22:46, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/12/01 23:26 (GMT+0100) jdd composed:

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Le 01/12/2009 22:51, Felix Miata a écrit :

...

...

...

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

...

...

Have you ever tried 'X -configure'? If it fails for you, you could file an upstream bug, since it's built into X and shouldn't depend on Novell staff to make work.

...

don't know about that.

...

Listen... I had years to learn how sax2 works, you can't expect me to change all without notice.

I hear that. One only need mention KDE4 to a happy KDE3 user to know how well received learning all new tricks can be. My point is the near future death of SaX2 will not leave those of us whose hardware doesn't work with xrandr with no alternative. You might as well give it a try soon, to make sure it can to what you need when the time comes that it's all you have left. That's a point, xrandr and older hardware. I forgot to mention that in all my VirtualBox VM's I've been changing screen resolutions via KDE4, native shouldn't be any different. Regards Sid.

-- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Il mercoledì 02 dicembre 2009, Cristian Rodríguez scrisse:

On 01/12/09 19:46, Felix Miata wrote:

My point is the near future death of

...

SaX2 will not leave those of us whose hardware doesn't work with xrandr with no alternative.

If you find such hardware, open a bug report so it can get fixed.. Sure: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=555625

Maybe a corner case (very old chipset) but such hardware still exists. bye. -- *** Linux user # 198661 ---_ ICQ 33500725 *** *** Home http://www.kailed.net *** *** Powered by openSUSE *** -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 12:48:15AM +0100, Daniele wrote:

Il mercoledì 02 dicembre 2009, Cristian Rodríguez scrisse:

...

On 01/12/09 19:46, Felix Miata wrote:

My point is the near future death of

...

SaX2 will not leave those of us whose hardware doesn't work with xrandr with no alternative.

If you find such hardware, open a bug report so it can get fixed.. Sure: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=555625

Maybe a corner case (very old chipset) but such hardware still exists. bye.

Yes, these are the corner cases. This laptop uses a trident chipset and DDC reading doesn't work (either because there is no support for DDC from the panel or some other reason). Also the Trident driver doesn't support the new version of xrandr. In such cases a config file would help. This however begs the question how much time and efford do we want to spend supporting this hardware: it's the typical 80/20 game where 20 percent of the systems require 80 percent of the work. Also should this effort be spent maintaining SaX2? IHMO the proper solution would be to fix up those old drivers. But a lot of people who know how to do this don't have the hardware any more. If the free software community was working the way it's always been painted this would not be a problem at all: those people who still have and use this harware would just do this themselves... oh, well. Cheers, Egbert. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 02 December 2009 19:07:22 Carlos E. R. wrote:

The users of a piece of hardware may have no idea how to fix a driver, they may be just users. People that know how to do that, devs, are probably tech lovers that love current, powerful hardware... so users are left stranded.

The same process works with any software. You can't find XP drivers for hardware that was out with win 98. If you need that hardware you either use win 98, or look for new hardware. The same is with Linux. When you are lucky some developer will maintain drivers for old hardware to work with new kernels, but if there is none, then you either use old kernel, or look for new hardware. My experience is that Linux still supports a lot more of 10 years old hardware, while other don't. My old computer is 8 years old and still runs fine. With another option the story would be completely different if a lot of large customers wouldn't require XP in order to avoid upgrade of every piece of software and hardware they have.

Told other way, it is wrong to assume that any user can maintain software by themselves.

Which is what Egbert told us with "oh, well", but the truth is that everybody can learn C to extent that will allow him/her to read the code, then ask for help and get that help. With other platforms you are stuck with vendor willingness to provide driver, which for old hardware, unless it is very popular and vendor would make angry a lot of people, means no driver. -- Regards Rajko, openSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Autoconfig failed on my Thinkpad A22m. It has an ATI Mobility M3/8MB Chip(basically a Rage128). I couldn't even log into the desktop because it looked like it set it to 800x600(panel is 1400x1050) and 1/3 of the screen was copied over another part of the screen and it was unusable. SaX2 fixed it. KDE4 is very sluggish on this machine compared to 11.0/KDE3.... :-( -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Thursday 03 December 2009 14:10:47 Per Jessen wrote:

Rajko M. wrote:

...

... but the truth is that everybody can learn C to extent that will allow him/her to read the code,

Rajko, you need to get out more. I can assure you there is no truth in that whatsoever. Even if any arbitrary person could get that far, it doesn't mean he or she would be able to make any sense of the code.

Per, I was talking about chance - not how many can and will use it. FOSS doesn't actively prevent its users from reading the code providing that they have programming and technical skills to understand the topic. It is the same story as with article written in foreign language. Not many can read it, either they don't know the language, or they are not familiar with the topic, but those that have both skills are not prevented by legal obstacles to read it. -- Regards Rajko, openSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/5 Carlos E. R. :

On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 21:12 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

...

On Wednesday 02 December 2009 19:07:22 Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

The users of a piece of hardware may have no idea how to fix a driver, they may be just users. People that know how to do that, devs, are probably tech lovers that love current, powerful hardware... so users are left stranded.

The same process works with any software. You can't find XP drivers for hardware that was out with win 98. If you need that hardware you either use win 98, or look for new hardware.

The same is with Linux.

Well... it was written that one of the pro's points of Linux was that it could run on older hardware just fine, where windows couldn't. That is not always true any longer. And yes, this 9 year computer runs about fine, too. Not a proof, really; on some Bugzillas I've been told that my hardware is too old.

Why can't you install old version of Linux on the old hardware? I found modern browser like Firefox worked surprisingly well displaying remotely via X.

Not true, either. Not everybody is capable of programming in C, even if taught. That they think they can is the root cause of a lot of horrible software around. Me, I learnt C. I earned my potatoes programming once, not so long ago. I programmed in C and other things. And no, I'm not capable of maintaining an existing C Linux project. I know very well the kind of effort it needs...

Very, very true!! Amusingly so :)

The possibility exists, yes. But for practical purposes, plain users are just as stuck as with any other os. It takes longer to be stuck, yes, but stuck we are in the long term.

People who want everything served up on a plate, are just as stuck, those who are willing to make an effort can. Why can't old version of X & sax2 be built on these troublesome "retro" machines. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/5 Felix Miata :

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Why can't you install old version of Linux on the old hardware? I found modern browser like Firefox worked surprisingly well displaying remotely via X.

Thanks for removing relevant part of quote .. X reference did matter.

1-security updates stop after "support" for the release is terminated 2-installing out of support releases means necessary bugfixes/patches from their updates repos generally are no longer available

I do know that, most likely the hardware is not supported by the manufacturer either. If I took out a pentium MMX based 8MiB RAM machine, do you think openSUSE 11.2 should just work on it? If not why is your old hardware worthy and mine not? The problem is, you cannot stop the external world changing, new things being developed, that require resources. At some point you have to cut the cloth to suit and accept that the power & maintenance consumed by a device make it uneconomic. You do not need all bugfixes/patches & support to display applications that run on newer hardware via X. Without need to support X and modern desktop, then the hardware requirements for practical use of the distro drop significantly. Imposing that a distro support everything for ever requirement, will make a distribution untestable and it unworkable to move forwards, becoming impossibly impractical over any long timescale. There are conservative distributions, that do aim at longevity of old hardware, and they can take decisions to suit that niche. Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 12/05/2009 11:59 AM, Larry Stotler wrote:

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

...

If I took out a pentium MMX based 8MiB RAM machine, do you think openSUSE 11.2 should just work on it? If not why is your old hardware worthy and mine not?

Of course not. 8MB was a super bare minimum even 10 years ago. However, I Pentium II/II with 512MB RAM should work properly. Even some of those machines can't support 512MB. I have a Thinkpad X21 P3/700 that maxes are 384. I also had a Pentium Pro Server that had 4GB RAM and dual procs years ago. A 200Mhz PPro is still too slow for most things.

According to a report in the openSUSE Forums, 11.2 can be installed from the LiveCD on an i686 machine as long as swap is available. The installation was slow, but it worked. From my own experience with an i586-class machine, you can do a NET install with 256 MB as long as you select "text only" at boot time. I also have an i586 machine with 128 MB. The only way to install 11.2 is to take its disk to another machine. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hi, On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, jdd wrote:

Le 05/12/2009 19:32, Larry Finger a écrit :

...

128 MB. The only way to install 11.2 is to take its disk to another machine. add ram then remove it afterward :-) (it works very well)

vaio:0 19:54:53 ~ # cat /etc/SuSE-release openSUSE 11.2 (i586) VERSION = 11.2 vaio:0 19:55:08 ~ # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 117444 111608 5836 0 9696 63808 -/+ buffers/cache: 38104 79340 Swap: 377488 0 377488 vaio:0 19:55:13 ~ # I have done an update via NET iso without problems, but it needed about 8 hours and was constantly swapping. Viele Gruesse Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Moenkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Goettingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Goettingen Registergericht: Goettingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Larry Finger wrote:

On 12/05/2009 12:57 PM, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:

...

On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, jdd wrote:

...

Le 05/12/2009 19:32, Larry Finger a écrit :

...

...

...

128 MB. The only way to install 11.2 is to take its disk to another machine. add ram then remove it afterward :-) (it works very well)

vaio:0 19:54:53 ~ # cat /etc/SuSE-release openSUSE 11.2 (i586) VERSION = 11.2 vaio:0 19:55:08 ~ # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 117444 111608 5836 0 9696 63808 -/+ buffers/cache: 38104 79340 Swap: 377488 0 377488 vaio:0 19:55:13 ~ #

I have done an update via NET iso without problems, but it needed about 8 hours and was constantly swapping.

Mine has a kernel panic while downloading part 2 of 6, but I never enabled swap. Where do you do that in the NET install?

The disk has a swap partition (type 82), and I only have to answer "yes" to the question if it shall get used. Viele Gruesse Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Moenkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Goettingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Goettingen Registergericht: Goettingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 12/05/2009 12:47 PM, jdd wrote:

Le 05/12/2009 19:32, Larry Finger a écrit :

...

128 MB. The only way to install 11.2 is to take its disk to another machine. add ram then remove it afterward :-) (it works very well)

That info is good to know, but that machine is at max RAM. It is a Sony laptop that I bought refurbished in 1998. It sits quietly in the corner functioning as my disk (and sometimes print) server. It is on a 100 Mb network link and keeps up quite well, even though it only has a 133 MHz Pentium. It has not run a GUI since SuSE 9.3. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/5 Eberhard Moenkeberg :

I have a GUI running with my 128 MB RAM - icewm.

From http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/30/alternative-linux-web-browsers/

I'm running icewm on the small 240MiB RAM box to, but it didn't really solve requirements for Internet access, because of RAM Firefox would need. tried arora which was noticeably lighter and snappier, leaving good amount of memory free for caches. Not used it extensively yet, but it looked promising. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hi, On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Larry Stotler wrote:

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:

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No. It is wrong and wrong leading. See my previous post about facts.

Actually, I've done both. I've installed with 256 and then dropped it down to 64MB and it worked just fine although not recently.

...

I have a GUI running with my 128 MB RAM - icewm.

I ran 11.0/Beta3 on a PowerMac 6500 with 128MB RAM and IceWM and it was slow as molassas with the stock 603e/225. With a G3/400 upgrade it probably would have been better.

Yes, it is slow, but it works and is usable. So the original meaning "you need at least 256 MB RAM" is wrong. Viele Gruesse Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Moenkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Goettingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Goettingen Registergericht: Goettingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Larry Finger wrote:

According to a report in the openSUSE Forums, 11.2 can be installed from the LiveCD on an i686 machine as long as swap is available. The installation was slow, but it worked. From my own experience with an i586-class machine, you can do a NET install with 256 MB as long as you select "text only" at boot time. I also have an i586 machine with 128 MB. The only way to install 11.2 is to take its disk to another machine.

I installed 11.2 on a K6-3/400 with 256MB RAM. It's used as a proxy server for a dial up connection and it has no GUI. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/5 Larry Stotler :

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

...

If I took out a pentium MMX based 8MiB RAM machine, do you think openSUSE 11.2 should just work on it?  If not why is your old hardware worthy and mine not?

Of course not.  8MB was a super bare minimum even 10 years ago. However, I Pentium II/II with 512MB RAM should work properly.  Even some of those machines can't support 512MB.  I have a Thinkpad X21 P3/700 that maxes are 384.

Pentium II can work properly! I have a dual Celeron system, Nvidia made graphics card legacy, should I whine about sax2 3D option not working any more like it did with 8.2? I have OS-11.1 running on laptop with 240MiB effective RAM, KDE 4.3.3 *does* run on it, but it's not a sane thing to do. Once you need a browser, far too much patience is required, even having swap partiton on flash. In principal you are saying that old hardware can be dropped at some point, you just want the newest release to work perfectly with your old hardware, including X Desktop. That's not going to be realistic if there's big changes, where do the developers put the time in, getting 90% of machines running really well, or getting 95% of machines barely running acceptably because they spent so much time on trying to support 5% of hardware base? Why won't an older version of X, and desktop, re-compiled be a possible solution if you're inconvenienced by sax2 being withdrawn, and new graphics developments don't support your system well? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Larry Stotler wrote:

...

That's not going to be realistic if there's big changes, where do the developers put the time in, getting 90% of machines running really well, or getting 95% of machines barely running acceptably because they spent so much time on trying to support 5% of hardware base?

Well, ATI chipsets are found in a huge amount of servers(the RageXL).

Servers rarely run GUIs. Well, my servers certainly don't. /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (0.0°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2009-12-05 at 13:05 -0000, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

2009/12/5 Carlos E. R. <>:

...

...

The same is with Linux.

Well... it was written that one of the pro's points of Linux was that it could run on older hardware just fine, where windows couldn't. That is not always true any longer. And yes, this 9 year computer runs about fine, too. Not a proof, really; on some Bugzillas I've been told that my hardware is too old.

Why can't you install old version of Linux on the old hardware? I found modern browser like Firefox worked surprisingly well displaying remotely via X.

Yes, of course; but old versions have old holes. Ie, security bugs. Plus, you may need some new features or something that has been solved recently. I have a machine here that runs SuSE 7.3, but I don't use it to browse internet. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksagHsACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UMlACfUsAHT/JFwC2XW2NL1YMzBG0P l2IAoIQB2mTUFOuaS4ejkShghH3pcqS3 =YKOf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 05/12/2009 18:56, Rajko M. a écrit :

Any user of old version of SUSE, like 7.3 is better off with it then with any contemporary win based system with similar hardware requirements.

and don't worry too much, I have an old server, 9 years old :-) with a debian never updated for 6 years and vever compromised :-) so old we don't know how to mimic it's working, so we let it until death :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 06/12/2009 13:11, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

Even puppy can't be installed on that machine: it requires I think it was 200 MiB of ram,

64Mb (said to) and it has only 32MiB. It is, I think, because it

uses a full live cd as install system,

no, can install from boot, even usbkey but it's a very special distro jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 06 December 2009 12:12:10 Egbert Eich wrote:

However for contributing small things, look at the code to track down a bug doesn't require very good probramming skills.

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

I'd rather take a patch for a bug that's not idea and rework it than have to track down every single issue myself.

I guess that even approximate location of bug or activation of debug mode and look in logs is far better then nothing at all.

A lot of my work involves drivers. There we often encounter problems which we cannot reproduce ourselves.

It is coming back to think how we can use better smolt and hardware detection tools, make information upload lesser labor intensive, from prospectives of user, developer and/or helper in forums. -- Regards Rajko, openSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 at 06:43:20PM -0500, Jeff Mahoney wrote:

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...

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

This is a really good point. Personally, I learned C after I was messing around with code. In a previous life, I ran a bunch of DEC Ultrix

Welcome to the club :)

systems. No shared libraries, ancient X implementation, etc. I ended up building a *lot* of things for these systems and it didn't always go smoothly.

I guess it boils down to "it's a lot easier to read code than to write it." Most of the debugging process is the triage and fault isolation. Once the problem has been identified, even if it's just narrowed down to code between printfs, fixing the problem can be a lot quicker.

:)))

...

It is coming back to think how we can use better smolt and hardware detection tools, make information upload lesser labor intensive, from prospectives of user, developer and/or helper in forums.

This is something that we've discussed informally for a while. I would love to have a tool that automatically sends backtraces of every crashing program that we ship back to a server so that we can. We've always ended up getting hung up on the privacy concerns. If it's opt-in, not enough people participate. If it's opt-out, we get complaints about privacy.

We could make progress here if we met on some middle ground. If people had all this information ready to attach to bugzilla when they report a bug it would be very useful already. Writing a bugzilla entry is a wilful act, so I guess no privacy concerns here :) Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/6 Jeff Mahoney :

On 12/06/2009 06:22 PM, Rajko M. wrote:

...

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

This is a really good point. Personally, I learned C after I was messing around with code. In a previous life, I ran a bunch of DEC Ultrix systems. No shared libraries, ancient X implementation, etc. I ended up building a *lot* of things for these systems and it didn't always go smoothly.

I had some MIPS based DECstations, I remember the "advance" getting gcc installed and how it eased porting. Not sure if it's always easier to read code, than write. As touched on very many coders seem unable to see things from point of view of other ppl, comment the obvious and leave the whacky & bizarre to speak for itself. 2009/12/7 Karsten König :

...

...

It is coming back to think how we can use better smolt and hardware detection tools, make information upload lesser labor intensive, from prospectives of user, developer and/or helper in forums.

This is something that we've discussed informally for a while. I would love to have a tool that automatically sends backtraces of every crashing program that we ship back to a server so that we can

KDE.org has something like this, the "new" Dr. Konqui makes a stacktrace etc what might be important and asks the user how to reproduce it etc, basicly the same as a bugzilla interface, just right after the program crashed and with all the infos at hand (if you have the -debug packages installed that is).

Problem with bugreports like these is people often don't respond to questions,

The problem I have had, is the stack trace doesn't have the symbolic information to make it "useful" and as one is very likely to be punted upstream, there's not much incentive to spend much time on KDE bug reports. Is including symbolics a performance hit, or just a disk space issue? Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/07/2009 05:39 AM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

2009/12/6 Jeff Mahoney :

...

On 12/06/2009 06:22 PM, Rajko M. wrote:

...

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

This is a really good point. Personally, I learned C after I was messing around with code. In a previous life, I ran a bunch of DEC Ultrix systems. No shared libraries, ancient X implementation, etc. I ended up building a *lot* of things for these systems and it didn't always go smoothly.

I had some MIPS based DECstations, I remember the "advance" getting gcc installed and how it eased porting.

Not sure if it's always easier to read code, than write. As touched on very many coders seem unable to see things from point of view of other ppl, comment the obvious and leave the whacky & bizarre to speak for itself.

2009/12/7 Karsten König :

...

...

...

It is coming back to think how we can use better smolt and hardware detection tools, make information upload lesser labor intensive, from prospectives of user, developer and/or helper in forums.

This is something that we've discussed informally for a while. I would love to have a tool that automatically sends backtraces of every crashing program that we ship back to a server so that we can

KDE.org has something like this, the "new" Dr. Konqui makes a stacktrace etc what might be important and asks the user how to reproduce it etc, basicly the same as a bugzilla interface, just right after the program crashed and with all the infos at hand (if you have the -debug packages installed that is).

Problem with bugreports like these is people often don't respond to questions,

The problem I have had, is the stack trace doesn't have the symbolic information to make it "useful" and as one is very likely to be punted upstream, there's not much incentive to spend much time on KDE bug reports.

Is including symbolics a performance hit, or just a disk space issue?

It's a disk space issue. The symbol tables are in a different ELF section and don't actually get loaded at runtime. The thing is that it is a *huge* disk space issue. The kernel packages, for example, grow to over 1 GB in size if they include debuginfo. I do a lot of testing without building RPMs and I have to remember to strip the debuginfo when installing the modules or I very quickly run out of disk space on my root filesystem. I haven't ever actually tried it, but it should be possible to translate the backtrace on a different machine, if the matching debuginfo is available. The down side is that you don't end up getting symbolic information for things in the stack frame (like current variables). - -Jeff - -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksdHPsACgkQLPWxlyuTD7LU3gCggR6wwISiwyEscva8GM85bYEH +jwAoJh0R2d+ie0o604R0A0I+GFvQc3l =ogq2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Jeff Mahoney wrote:

On 12/07/2009 05:39 AM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

...

Is including symbolics a performance hit, or just a disk space issue?

It's a disk space issue. The symbol tables are in a different ELF section and don't actually get loaded at runtime. The thing is that it is a *huge* disk space issue. The kernel packages, for example, grow to over 1 GB in size if they include debuginfo. I do a lot of testing without building RPMs and I have to remember to strip the debuginfo when installing the modules or I very quickly run out of disk space on my root filesystem.

That's the reason why the "Breakpad" tool and it's "Socorro" server side (hosted on Google code if you are interested), which we are using at Mozilla, has us upload the symbols to a central server when doing builds we ship to users/testers, and then send the crash reports to the server, where the stack traces can be re-connected with the symbols (and even linked to web-representations of source repos). Of course, what we mostly do is just looking at agglomerated crash data - or, if users provide crash IDs in bugs, at those specific reports, all via the web interfaces on the socorro server instance, which has the symbols all resolved nicely. See http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/ for what we have up there, it's all public :) Robert Kaiser -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 07 December 2009 09:23:46 Jeff Mahoney wrote:

On the plus side, the utility could provide a link to the bug report after it submitted it. The user could choose to participate or just ignore it.

Mozilla has something like that, but I couldn't find where the thing was uploaded. It doesn't ask about bug report, so one has to find URL and post it to bugzilla. I'm sure that information about handling those dumps exist somewhere, but after some digging without result I lost interest. Nice idea, but bug reporting chain is missing links :) -- Regards Rajko, openSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:56:15AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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...

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

It is not only code, it is tools. I used turbodebugger (Borland), locally or over a serial port. I can't use the linux debugger, I have no idea how.

To program in C I used borland C IDE. You press ctrl-F1 over a function and you get help on that particular function. Or you you browse the help index to find a function to do something... AFAIK that is not possible here. Plus, I got a set of books, in paper, explaining the set of libraries I got. Explaining how to do things... Yes, here there is documentation, but you have to find it. Dispersed.

When I was taught C they "forced" me to write a small preamble on each file explaining what this file of source code this. To document each and every function on what input to receive, what output it produced, what variables it changed, and what it did. To write a document on how the program worked; not a user documentation, but a developer documentation. Both, actually.

I don't see that kind of effort here.

Al that makes a newcomer efforts very difficult. So... no, I can't look at linux code. Yes, I tried. So I know I can't, except the very simplest of things...

Carlos, I see your point and I see where you are coming from. A few projects are like you describe, most aren't though and certainly the use if IDEs is not wide spread in Linux, I agree. If you expect a nice, well integrated development and debugging environment which lets you even browse thru the documentation of the function calls you use, then there is probably nothing we can offer. But for the little baby steps required to get started or to make a useful contribution or help isolate a bug maybe a simple "cheat sheet" would suffice. - Describing how to get documentation on library function (for some this may even exists). 'man ' often does the job already. - Describing the handful commands needed to operate a debugger (there are graphical front end around which make the job easier). - Describing the few command one needs to use a version control system. If people think that might be helpful I'd sign my name up to get this started. As always - participation is appreciated. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-12-07 at 11:48 +0100, Petr Baudis wrote:

Hi!

Maybe I'm just touching the concrete examples, I just try to show that things aren't that bad.

On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:56:15AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On Sunday, 2009-12-06 at 17:22 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

...

...

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

It is not only code, it is tools. I used turbodebugger (Borland), locally or over a serial port. I can't use the linux debugger, I have no idea how.

Perhaps this two-page intro might be useful?

http://linux.bytesex.org/gdb.html

daunting...

For my taste, for a basic intro it is missing just two things, 'next' for step without recursion and 'info threads' for examining other threads.

...

To program in C I used borland C IDE. You press ctrl-F1 over a function and you get help on that particular function. Or you you browse the help index to find a function to do something... AFAIK that is not possible here. Plus, I got a set of books, in paper, explaining the set of libraries I got. Explaining how to do things... Yes, here there is documentation, but you have to find it. Dispersed.

If you use vi, move over the function with cursor and press 'K' (if a shell command documentation pops up instead, try '3K' or '2K'). I'm sure other editors have similar gadgets.

Certainly not! Do you compare vi with borland's class full IDE? X'-) gdb, info, vi... those are the precise examples that send me running for my life :-)

...

When I was taught C they "forced" me to write a small preamble on each file explaining what this file of source code this. To document each and every function on what input to receive, what output it produced, what variables it changed, and what it did. To write a document on how the program worked; not a user documentation, but a developer documentation. Both, actually.

I don't see that kind of effort here.

That is true, some may see it as bigger problem, others as smaller. If you are debugging the net stack code, that's quite troublesome, if you are debugging crash in some simple tool, I don't think that's that a big deal. Also, individual software packages differ a lot.

It is a big deal if a chap with no previous knowledge of that code is trying to lend a hand, understand how the program should work, and then find out why it doesn't. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksc9hsACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WDzgCgjN97LgAlwb1qgyXsVmC7tyHl XBcAniYK3ZVX0/MaAs15A/jkiA5pK+4G =Gjym -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-12-07 at 13:42 +0100, Petr Baudis wrote:

On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:33:29PM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

gdb, info, vi... those are the precise examples that send me running for my life :-)

But it's not clear why...

Precisely >:-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksdqdkACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WB0wCfQgZ8J+8puctIsS8EhAknBOEg JUQAnjsY0xEemp+oPwDN798XleR8E8o0 =NGzy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 at 05:22:53PM -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

On Sunday 06 December 2009 12:12:10 Egbert Eich wrote:

...

However for contributing small things, look at the code to track down a bug doesn't require very good probramming skills.

It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.

...

I'd rather take a patch for a bug that's not idea and rework it than have to track down every single issue myself.

I guess that even approximate location of bug or activation of debug mode and look in logs is far better then nothing at all.

Doing 'git bisect' is another example that comes to my mind.

...

A lot of my work involves drivers. There we often encounter problems which we cannot reproduce ourselves.

It is coming back to think how we can use better smolt and hardware detection tools, make information upload lesser labor intensive, from prospectives of user, developer and/or helper in forums.

Hardware detection is often not the problem: reproducing exactly the same situation the user had is. It's often not possible and even if it is it's a tedious undertaking consuming a lot of time which could be spend better working on the actual code. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-12-07 at 11:57 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

Egbert Eich wrote:

...

I agree with your statement. However for contributing small things, look at the code to track down a bug doesn't require very good probramming skills.

I'm not convinced that is correct - at least personally, I need to know how something is supposed to work before I can even begin think to look for why it doesn't work. It doesn't matter whether it is code or an old radio with a bad soldering or a broken resistor.

Exactly... - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksc9HEACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WWEACffBpwGrzPgvFaRf+nzgOYEBKg NVQAni+imDoQwATkbrGsvMOr+zbmv1Kl =D/ke -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 02:07:22AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 13:41 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:

...

...

IHMO the proper solution would be to fix up those old drivers. But a lot of people who know how to do this don't have the hardware any more.

If the free software community was working the way it's always been painted this would not be a problem at all: those people who still have and use this harware would just do this themselves... oh, well.

There is something wrong there.

The users of a piece of hardware may have no idea how to fix a driver, they may be just users. People that know how to do that, devs, are probably tech lovers that love current, powerful hardware... so users are left stranded.

Told other way, it is wrong to assume that any user can maintain software by themselves.

I don't expect every user to fix his drivers. But at the end of the day somebody needs to do this. So here is a list of groups that would qualify: a. the hardware vendor b. the Linux distributor c. some free software enthusiast who can code. a. and b. can only do so much: those entities will only invest a limited amount of resources into this - which is due to finacial constraints, market share ... whatever. c. could make a difference here - the bigger the more people became involved. I personally can help to grow c. I can try to do something about a. and b. - by whining at my managers or at IHVs. Which I've done already with only very limited success :( In the end of the day the only thing you and me and most everybody else here can change is c. The only other alternatives I see is to either live and arrange oneself with broken or non-existent drivers and stop complaining. or switch to Windows or any other purely commercial OS. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 03/12/09 17:18, Per Jessen wrote:

So those are the type of users the openSUSE project needs to attract/"recruit".

I fail to see where Egbert is saying that.

That would appear to be in stark contrast to other "factions" of the project making sure openSUSE is more palatable to Joe User, who doesn't need e.g. sshd running on his home-PC.

It doesnt have to be in contrast, it should rather be a complement. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2009-12-03 at 16:55 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:

On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 02:07:22AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

Told other way, it is wrong to assume that any user can maintain software by themselves.

I don't expect every user to fix his drivers. But at the end of the day somebody needs to do this. So here is a list of groups that would qualify:

a. the hardware vendor b. the Linux distributor c. some free software enthusiast who can code.

Yes.

a. and b. can only do so much: those entities will only invest a limited amount of resources into this - which is due to finacial constraints, market share ... whatever. c. could make a difference here - the bigger the more people became involved.

Yes, too.

I personally can help to grow c. I can try to do something about a. and b. - by whining at my managers or at IHVs. Which I've done already with only very limited success :( In the end of the day the only thing you and me and most everybody else here can change is c.

Yep.

The only other alternatives I see is to either live and arrange oneself with broken or non-existent drivers and stop complaining. or switch to Windows or any other purely commercial OS.

Well, plain users can only complain >:-P My point is that it is not completely true to assume that plain users can take over maintenance or developing. We can't. I know I can't, even tough I said that once I did programming for a living. (The learning curve is too steep as to be discouraging...) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksaUNsACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UcQACfSYo64DpVsyiDKrAYYeIbP+m+ ausAnj61E4JVNFvwEqNalqjlURC02Sve =z0cl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2009-12-06 at 18:59 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:

On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 01:23:53PM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Well, plain users can only complain >:-P

My point is that it is not completely true to assume that plain users can take over maintenance or developing. We can't. I know I can't, even tough I said that once I did programming for a living.

(The learning curve is too steep as to be discouraging...)

No, I don't think so. There is always an area where one can get into. You don't have to be able to overlook all technologies in the entire product. Nobody does - I certainly don't.

Even knowing what function to use to do something, of what is the proper way to do things, is overtly difficult. I have read technical discussions on mail lists that using such obscure function to do something was dumbassed instead of using some other function even more obscure! No, thanks... too complex. I don't have energy left to learn those tricks, this dog is feeling too old. I once read a book, that SuSE put in the /usr/share/docsomething directory, about programming in linux. It was never finished. And it is obsolete, linux moves too fast. If anyone wants to encourage new devs to come to linux, and not only young students out of school or university, such texts must be finished and provided.

Most people who got involved in free software because they had a scratch to itch. Something that bothered them so much that they had to do something about it. So either there is nothing that pesters people enough to become involved themselves or ranting has been such a successful strategy that they did not have to bother. I don't expect this to be true forever.

Carlos, this is not against you, and I certainly don't expect everybody who uses free software to also contribute. But the notion 'it is too difficult anyway' is something that keep people from even trying.

I contribute, but not with coding. (even though I some code of my own running in this computer...) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkscVqEACgkQtTMYHG2NR9VXsQCcCb9ZBeHCMl5p3xg6rmtpb995 jeoAn1uxqoynK7C/Uf8Swa974g0YU0Cr =Bsxd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-12-07 at 11:41 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

I once read a book, that SuSE put in the /usr/share/docsomething directory, about programming in linux. It was never finished. And it is obsolete, linux moves too fast.

We're rapidly moving OT here, but nobody really needs a book about "programming in linux". The process is (with a limited set of variations) the same as on any other operating system. If you can write code for DOS, you can also write it for linux. The tools are different, but is a matter of reading a man page or two, plus taking a peek at how somebody else did it. At least that is what I usually do :-)

A man page describes a function you already knows its name. It is no use when trying to find a function to do something you need. And it doesn't explain the process. No, you don't need that kind of documentation, because you already know. To me, it is daunting. (and yes, I have written some programs in Linux. Using pascal, of course :-p )

...

If anyone wants to encourage new devs to come to linux, and not only young students out of school or university, such texts must be finished and provided.

Linux does not have a problem attracting new developers; I'm not convinced the lack of such texts is a real problem.

I'm sure they come, but newly trained. Not many coming from outside. IMHO. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksc+BEACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WJpgCcDjiJ50uXUFioI31D2iH144St 7r0An2UlD/x++9Oe8J25M7PDGHFwkU3j =1llb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-12-07 at 17:16 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

A man page describes a function you already knows its name. It is no use when trying to find a function to do something you need. And it doesn't explain the process.

If I'm looking for a library function for a particular purpose, but I don't know if someone's already written it, I go and google that purpose. If I had a fairly good idea, I would try 'man -k', or 'find /usr/include -follow -type f | xargs grep -i <whatever>'. The other day I was working on a project wrt DKIM - the only code/implementation I had seen was perl-based, but with a bit of research, I discovered libdkim (pretty obvious name) as part of the sendmail package. In order use it, dkim.h is the first place to look, then perhaps some of the test programs.

Yes, but that's because you already have a rough idea of what you are looking for, you can make an educated guess. I can't.

...

No, you don't need that kind of documentation, because you already know. To me, it is daunting.

Which is an issue that can't be solved by documentation, because how would you know which document or book to read when you don't know which library you want to use.

No, because on an organized documentation the first thing is a description of what each library does. More than one line per lib, obviously ;-)

...

...

...

If anyone wants to encourage new devs to come to linux, and not only young students out of school or university, such texts must be finished and provided.

Linux does not have a problem attracting new developers; I'm not convinced the lack of such texts is a real problem.

I'm sure they come, but newly trained. Not many coming from outside. IMHO.

I take it you mean 'outside' to mean "not directly from a university or similar"? As far as I can see, the opportunities for a programmer or engineer coming from an otherwise unrelated field and starting to write some code for Linux are far greater than for any other platform. If people don't take that opportunity, it's not due to lack of documentation or information.

No, I mean from outside linux developing. A chap coming directly from university or college or school now, a young chap, has a strong chance of having trained in developing in/for linux. Me, I met linux long after I left school, and after I stopped programming professionally. I know little of linux programming, and I'm little inclined to investigate for months and train myself. Yes, if I wanted to get into linux programming, lack of proper documentation (formal) is an issue. I know. I have done some small programs for linux :-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksdqYMACgkQtTMYHG2NR9VU8QCbBUjWtV8UDAF0GWByXp5dwJOC PmAAn3NfD8U9oxo0S2FA/I4s2lTRXAWW =HL5s -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Guys, This is really getting off-topic for opensuse-factory. Would it be possible to move this discussion to a private one, or to the opensuse@ mailing list? Thanks, Vincent Le mardi 08 décembre 2009, à 09:19 +0100, Per Jessen a écrit :

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

...

No, you don't need that kind of documentation, because you already know. To me, it is daunting.

Which is an issue that can't be solved by documentation, because how would you know which document or book to read when you don't know which library you want to use.

No, because on an organized documentation the first thing is a description of what each library does. More than one line per lib, obviously ;-)

Some of what you're asking does exist - the POSIX standard for instance. The GNU libc documentation. That'll probably get you going. For the rest, for instance libdkim which I mentioned briefly, there is the include file "dkim.h" and html documentation as well. That goes for the vast majority of third party libraries I suspect. (a library without decent documentation is unlikely to achieve any greater popularity). Other libraries I use: libgd, libopenssl, libpcre, libz - they all come with very useful documentation. I don't think collecting a whole pile of that and turning it into a library reference manual is going to help very much. You'll only end up with one enormous book, and you still won't know where to start.

/Per

-- Per Jessen, Zürich (0.0°C)

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On 2009/12/01 20:21 (GMT-0300) Cristian Rodríguez composed:

Felix Miata wrote:

My point is the near future death of

...

SaX2 will not leave those of us whose hardware doesn't work with xrandr with no alternative.

If you find such hardware, open a bug report so it can get fixed..

The point of my comment was an inducement to test and report early and often when correctible cases are encountered. However, the problem isn't always in fixable software. Acceptable use of displays with corrupt or missing DDC/EDID will continue to require preconfiguration. Failure of a display to give good feedback to the display card is not singularly sufficient reason to abandon its use. -- " We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 04:51:27PM -0500, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/12/01 21:29 (GMT+0100) jdd composed:

...

I just want to say that Sax2 is mandatory now. On 11.2, changing a monitor for a worst one, with less resolution, let the user without solution and without screen (I had this on two very different computers)

...

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

Have you ever tried 'X -configure'? If it fails for you, you could file an upstream bug, since it's built into X and shouldn't depend on Novell staff to make work.

Right. In fact I was surprised how well it is working still. The result requires some manual editing but not too much. I used to spend a lot of time fixing it in the past as I was using it a lot but haven't dome so lately. Cheers, Egbert. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

However, if sax2 wasn't used from the beginning, there would be no static configuration for the better monitor, X would automatically determine the (probably) right settings instead. And if you change the monitor, X simply picks fresh settings appropriate for the new monitor.

Of course there are probably corner cases where the settings picked by X aren't optimal. I guess the argument is that in these *specific* cases, it should be possible to hand-tune the configuration using the existing GUI tools, and that cases where manual configuration change is necessary are rare enough for that to be a sufficient solution.

I have to say here that the auto tools are working VERY well for me on 11.2. I've tried various monitors, and even a projector (some call them beamers), and it got it right every time. When I wanted to adjust the auto selected resolution to something different, I just had to use the Display settings in the KDE4 Configure Desktop and I could select alternate resolutions. I've even had the case where a game crashed and left the desktop at a low resolution... setting it back to the correct resolution wasn't hard at all. I do have one more acid test for it though :-P My LCD TV which in theory can run at high resolutions... 1900x1040 or something like that, but sax2 could never configure higher than 1024x768 no matter what I did with it. Maybe I'll try it this coming weekend. I guess my point is... for me.. sax2 going away is no loss. The auto detect thing is working on my hardware way better than sax2 and the xorg.conf ever did. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

What about "special" cases, were I need xorg.conf, e.g. support for stereo or dual monitor layout? Am 02.12.2009 10:14, schrieb Will Stephenson:

On Tuesday 01 December 2009 23:20:06 Clayton wrote:

...

...

However, if sax2 wasn't used from the beginning, there would be no static configuration for the better monitor, X would automatically determine the (probably) right settings instead. And if you change the monitor, X simply picks fresh settings appropriate for the new monitor.

Of course there are probably corner cases where the settings picked by X aren't optimal. I guess the argument is that in these *specific* cases, it should be possible to hand-tune the configuration using the existing GUI tools, and that cases where manual configuration change is necessary are rare enough for that to be a sufficient solution.

I have to say here that the auto tools are working VERY well for me on 11.2. I've tried various monitors, and even a projector (some call them beamers), and it got it right every time. When I wanted to adjust the auto selected resolution to something different, I just had to use the Display settings in the KDE4 Configure Desktop and I could select alternate resolutions. I've even had the case where a game crashed and left the desktop at a low resolution... setting it back to the correct resolution wasn't hard at all.

I do have one more acid test for it though :-P My LCD TV which in theory can run at high resolutions... 1900x1040 or something like that, but sax2 could never configure higher than 1024x768 no matter what I did with it. Maybe I'll try it this coming weekend.

I have a similar experience when using my external digital monitors via the VGA port of my X60 (i945GM). xrandr and the GUI tools never report the native screen resolutions until I tell xrandr about it with gtf, --newmode and -- addmode.

Is there an established way to troubleshoot this?

Is it a bug in...

a) my monitors (no EDID?)

b) the intel driver?

c) Xorg?

Is it my fault because xrandr can't detect monitor resolution when using the external monitor?

Is it http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14176 ?

Will

-- Joachim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 14:02 +0100, Clayton wrote:

...

What about "special" cases, were I need xorg.conf, e.g. support for stereo or dual monitor layout?

Have you tried dual monitor layout with the new autodetect stuff? In my experiments with my computer/hardware, it works very well.. much better than the old xorg.conf way... and much easier.

In my case it was simply a case of plugging in the second monitor and triggering the autodetect (in KDE, going into the Display settings in the Configuration windows was all it took). The Display settings had all the config I needed.. setting which motor was right/left of the other, and resolutions of each monitor could be changes... could also set up cloned one big desktop.

If the machine has several users, each one has to repeat the configuration, or even ask somebody else to configure it for them, if they can't cope (it happens). There should be a way to do a global configuration of those things. It can be a default configuration (including keyboard) which can then be overridden by each user if they want. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksaVHQACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UthwCfXAq3AjWHm/ImmJ9VhsA5lFMi ShEAnAw2JHYUNozrpXG4tpRZybua1vUu =ug9c -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/02/2009 07:45 AM, Joachim Reichelt wrote:

What about "special" cases, were I need xorg.conf, e.g. support for stereo or dual monitor layout?

How is that a special case? My T60p has two external monitors attached to it, and the gnome display properties applet shows the two external displays as well as the internal LCD. All without any xorg.conf - -Jeff

Am 02.12.2009 10:14, schrieb Will Stephenson:

...

On Tuesday 01 December 2009 23:20:06 Clayton wrote:

...

...

However, if sax2 wasn't used from the beginning, there would be no static configuration for the better monitor, X would automatically determine the (probably) right settings instead. And if you change the monitor, X simply picks fresh settings appropriate for the new monitor.

Of course there are probably corner cases where the settings picked by X aren't optimal. I guess the argument is that in these *specific* cases, it should be possible to hand-tune the configuration using the existing GUI tools, and that cases where manual configuration change is necessary are rare enough for that to be a sufficient solution.

I have to say here that the auto tools are working VERY well for me on 11.2. I've tried various monitors, and even a projector (some call them beamers), and it got it right every time. When I wanted to adjust the auto selected resolution to something different, I just had to use the Display settings in the KDE4 Configure Desktop and I could select alternate resolutions. I've even had the case where a game crashed and left the desktop at a low resolution... setting it back to the correct resolution wasn't hard at all.

I do have one more acid test for it though :-P My LCD TV which in theory can run at high resolutions... 1900x1040 or something like that, but sax2 could never configure higher than 1024x768 no matter what I did with it. Maybe I'll try it this coming weekend.

I have a similar experience when using my external digital monitors via the VGA port of my X60 (i945GM). xrandr and the GUI tools never report the native screen resolutions until I tell xrandr about it with gtf, --newmode and -- addmode.

Is there an established way to troubleshoot this?

Is it a bug in...

a) my monitors (no EDID?)

b) the intel driver?

c) Xorg?

Is it my fault because xrandr can't detect monitor resolution when using the external monitor?

Is it http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14176 ?

Will

- -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksWiT8ACgkQLPWxlyuTD7JKpgCdHnwjuXdruHwd30xhpgsjH/D7 AJAAnjWUNgHdUmkGDqjfdJEVWMf1VCEq =e8bH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 10:14:35AM +0100, Will Stephenson wrote:

On Tuesday 01 December 2009 23:20:06 Clayton wrote:

...

...

However, if sax2 wasn't used from the beginning, there would be no static configuration for the better monitor, X would automatically determine the (probably) right settings instead. And if you change the monitor, X simply picks fresh settings appropriate for the new monitor.

Of course there are probably corner cases where the settings picked by X aren't optimal. I guess the argument is that in these *specific* cases, it should be possible to hand-tune the configuration using the existing GUI tools, and that cases where manual configuration change is necessary are rare enough for that to be a sufficient solution.

I have to say here that the auto tools are working VERY well for me on 11.2. I've tried various monitors, and even a projector (some call them beamers), and it got it right every time. When I wanted to adjust the auto selected resolution to something different, I just had to use the Display settings in the KDE4 Configure Desktop and I could select alternate resolutions. I've even had the case where a game crashed and left the desktop at a low resolution... setting it back to the correct resolution wasn't hard at all.

I do have one more acid test for it though :-P My LCD TV which in theory can run at high resolutions... 1900x1040 or something like that, but sax2 could never configure higher than 1024x768 no matter what I did with it. Maybe I'll try it this coming weekend.

I have a similar experience when using my external digital monitors via the VGA port of my X60 (i945GM). xrandr and the GUI tools never report the native screen resolutions until I tell xrandr about it with gtf, --newmode and -- addmode.

Is there an established way to troubleshoot this?

Is it a bug in...

a) my monitors (no EDID?)

b) the intel driver?

c) Xorg?

Is it my fault because xrandr can't detect monitor resolution when using the external monitor?

Most likely a driver issue.

Is it http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14176 ?

Unlikely unless you already use KMS, i.e. you load i915 module with option "modeset=1" ("i915.modeset=1" as boot option). CU, Stefan Public Key available ------------------------------------------------------ Stefan Dirsch (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Tel: 0911-740 53 0 Maxfeldstraße 5 FAX: 0911-740 53 479 D-90409 Nürnberg http://www.suse.de Germany ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 01/12/2009 23:07, Petr Baudis a écrit :

Others already said it, but I'd like to phrase it more clearly - the problem you are seeing is actually most likely precisely *because* sax2 is used!

sorry, no. I tryed to use sax2 because the conputer didn't work. I installed this computer with a monitor. With an other monitor (on an other location), I had no graphical screen (no even kdm, blank screen, monitor leds flashing) so what should I do? sax2 used to work. in fact sax2 -a solved the problem, but I found this much later. I had the exact same problem when connecting an external monitor on a laptop (no more screen, not even the laptop one) and all this *without* xorg.con file... it's just to say that sax2 -a solved the problem and I know of no other solution. may be there is one (probably), but how can I know? jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:29:53 +0100 jdd wrote:

the solution is sax2 -a, simply, so may be a very simplifyed sax2 is enough (may be a simple script)

alias sax2="rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf" ;-) -- Stefan Seyfried "Any ideas, John?" "Well, surrounding them's out." -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 02/12/2009 12:25, Rob OpenSuSE a écrit :

2009/12/2 Stefan Seyfried :

...

alias sax2="rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf"

Whoops that leaves a "temporary" file!

alias sax2="rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf{,.md5}

:) when the problem is precisely when there is no xorg.conf file, this is just silly

jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 02/12/2009 12:37, Rob OpenSuSE a écrit :

2009/12/2 jdd :

...

when the problem is precisely when there is no xorg.conf file, this is just silly

No, having an xorg.conf file is never a requirement.

If the new X server is not able to display on graphics card & monitor combination, then you file a bug against them.

this is not really usefull when you are stuck in front of a computer (and you know this computer worked previous day) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 02/12/2009 14:16, Stefan Seyfried a écrit :

...

this is not really usefull when you are stuck in front of a computer (and you know this computer worked previous day)

It happened in the past that "sax2 -a" also did not produce a working config.

So what is your point?

fact is now sax2 works and automatic xorg don't, and it's the working tool that is deprecated... but, again, this is just an example. I have lot of them. jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Moin, On Dec 02, 09 15:13:03 +0100, jdd wrote:

Le 02/12/2009 14:16, Stefan Seyfried a écrit :

...

...

this is not really usefull when you are stuck in front of a computer (and you know this computer worked previous day)

It happened in the past that "sax2 -a" also did not produce a working config.

So what is your point?

fact is now sax2 works and automatic xorg don't, and it's the working tool that is deprecated...

I wish it would be such black and white. It's more gray... Unfortunately sax2 also had problems, depending on the drivers, the hardware, and maybe even the phase of the moon. So yes, while it may be in your case the ideal solution, I have seen cases where I manually got active to overcome problems/shortcomings of sax2. The fact that the main developer was busy with other stuff for quite a while did not help sax2, either.

but, again, this is just an example. I have lot of them.

Sure. I just wish that we have something that "just works" without me having to know all technical details of an X server. But on the other hand, I sometimes also hope for an X driver that "just works", so ... Stefan -- Stefan Behlert, SUSE LINUX - a Novell business, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg, Germany Phone +49-911-74053-173 SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nuernberg; GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009, Sid Boyce wrote:

I had such an issue when I changed from an old and ailing Sun 22" monitor to a 22" flat wide screen, removing xorg.conf sorted it. I for one am glad to see such new stuff taking away some of the old irksome issues - if anyone else remembers back in the day when you needed a ruler, the manual and a calculator to get XFree86.conf right and also to not mention Linux if your monitor genuinely failed and you had to ask your supplier to replace it.

I remember those days, and I do not miss them. I am glad that xorg has gotten to the point where auto-config works. It saves a lot of hacking about. That said, I believe SaX2 continues to be useful, especially in supporting the kinds of really old hardware openSUSE gets run on. SaX2 dates from when that hardware was new, so it's still a good fit for configuring them. That said, once that hardware starts dying in sufficient numbers its utility will greatly diminish. Stacatto signals of constant information A loose affiliation of millionares, and billionares, baby These are the days of miracle and wonder -- Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 03/12/09 08:01, Per Jessen wrote:

Greg R. wrote:

...

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009, Sid Boyce wrote:

...

I had such an issue when I changed from an old and ailing Sun 22" monitor to a 22" flat wide screen, removing xorg.conf sorted it. I for one am glad to see such new stuff taking away some of the old irksome issues - if anyone else remembers back in the day when you needed a ruler, the manual and a calculator to get XFree86.conf right and also to not mention Linux if your monitor genuinely failed and you had to ask your supplier to replace it.

I remember those days, and I do not miss them. I am glad that xorg has gotten to the point where auto-config works. It saves a lot of hacking about. That said, I believe SaX2 continues to be useful, especially in supporting the kinds of really old hardware openSUSE gets run on. SaX2 dates from when that hardware was new, so it's still a good fit for configuring them. That said, once that hardware starts dying in sufficient numbers its utility will greatly diminish.

My first thought was also "What? you can't do that!", but I soon realized that it (retiring sax2 in favour of xrandr) makes a lot of sense. In my business, we also keep quite a bit of older hardware about, generally servers with no X; only PCs have a GUI. PCs basically have a limited life anyway, especially in the last 3-4-5 years with harddisk interfaces and peripheral busses changing every other week :-(, so in this instance, I don't see a real issue in possibly leaving some of the old hardware behind.

/Per

It's good if you have a good stock of old hardware, but when you suspect something on a newish box and all you have is new looking old bits still in their boxes, it comes as a shock when none of it fits the new gear or you can't find an old replacement on sale anywhere for the old gear - I've been there a few times alright. The refreshing thought is that you can buy new, no doubt soon-to-be obsolete stuff at a reasonable price. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le 02/12/2009 12:20, Egbert Eich a écrit :

As a free software developer who has devoted a lot of his spare time on developing free software I always found the demanding attitude of some users very inappropriate. This is no different regarding the demands made on Novell.

I spend 3/4 hours a day for opensource, mostly through documentation (and running a LUG) I also was running a big association some years ago. When I decided to stop, I warned the other members a very long time ahead (more than one year). if you want the advantages of opensource, you have also to be respectfull with the others.

...

with zero delay, very dificult

I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

your message said "we stop for 11.2" that is it's already stopped.

Then we should take a look at the situation and see what we can do about it. If you change a monitor on a running system you at least need to retrigger a scan (as this is not done automatically, yet).

? I moved the computer 200 miles away, of course it was stopped and restarted. Of course if the new

monitor does not support the old mode you will be left without a display - which is no different from before

sax2 -a did the job. Without sax2, what could I have done?

If you did monitor detection and it didn't work with your new monitor we should look into where the problems are and fix them.

done and I don't want here to focus on one specific case, I just gave examples to show the present system don't work well (I have others) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/2 Egbert Eich :

If you did monitor detection and it didn't work with your new monitor we should look into where the problems are and fix them. Please either report this in bugzilla or diskuss it on the opensuse-xorg@

Quick question then to make things clearer, please. Does this mean something is saved between boots so Monitor can be switched off on boot & X start up? (unlike old Windows where it would fall back to LCD (lowest common denominator *g*) display) How are we meant to trigger a rescan if it's not done automatically when X is started? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/2 Egbert Eich :

...

Does this mean something is saved between boots so Monitor can be switched off on boot & X start up?    (unlike old Windows where it would fall back to LCD (lowest common denominator *g*) display)

Monitors can be switched off on boot or even when you start up X as even switched off monitors should supply DDC data as the DDC circuit receives its power from the graphics board.

Sounds great but probably broken with common server setups using a KVM? Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Egbert Eich wrote:

Let me say it this way: If you tell a free software developer working on a specific project you want this and that feature in the project he will most likely only do something for you if he cares about the feature too. If he isn't intereseted you are on your own - but hey, it's free software, you can do something about it.

You can if you are a programmer and have the time to do the work. Or you can HOPE that someone else will step up, which often doesn't happen.

Novell is not much different from that: Novell needs to spend money to pay people to do work for them. Then this becomes a business decision - and as I've already stated in my original email - business decisions are not discussed with the community.

True enough, but it would help if the community had been kept better informed. So far, SINCE the release of 11.2, we've found out that PPC support was dropped, and now SaX2 has been dropped. Shouldn't this have come out beforehand and if it did, where did it come out? On the project lists? Shouldn't these kind of announcements be made on the website & regular mailing lists?

And of course this business decision wasn't made without considering the alternatives and making sure that they are viable before deprecating SaX2. This may sound hostile but it is not: openSUSE is free software just like SaX2. If people feel SaX2 is still of great value why can't they step up and take it over? This was the whole purpose of my original email. As a free software developer who has devoted a lot of his spare time on developing free software I always found the demanding attitude of some users very inappropriate. This is no different regarding the demands made on Novell.

I'm not knocking Novell for a business decision. These decisions can be hard, but they often need to be made. Lack of ability is the biggest problem. At least for someone like me. One thing that has always bothered me about open source(and this is something I'm dealing with now with a project to convert a business to open source & linux) is that the open source people promote it as being a better alternative. However, if I switch someone to openSUSE from Windows because they need program A or feature B, and then the maintainers decide they aren't going to update it anymore, then you've pushed away an important new user. Plus, a lot of new stuff like KDE4 just doesn't have compelling reasons for old timers. I totally understand the need to attract new people, but if you are pushing people away then you have an almost static situation instead of a net gain. Of course, you can't cater to everyone, but it is a problem. Personally, so long as the alternative works, then I'm not complaining. BUT, when things are promised but not delivered it creates a problem for the community. KDE4 was supposed to need LESS resources than KDE3 and that evaporated real fast. Now everyone is just told to upgrade(which is very difficult for some people considering the shape of the economy in the world today). Some, like my son, like a lot of the new stuff in KDE4. Others like myself just see the fluff and don't see the point in it when we just want something that works and is stable. KDE4 is finally becoming stable and more usable, but it was a rough road and many decisions were made which hurt it(and not just by the devs. distros that pushed it out way too soon like Fedora should have known better). In the end, an open source project still needs its community. The developers put this stuff out to encourage people to use it. If they aren't going to make a commitment to maintain it without a viable or better alternative, then they are in some ways hurting the uptake of open source software, and uptake is something we all want to see continue. That's why we are all here. Devs and users alike. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:

What if the experience gained by the release of 11.2 and auto-configuration was used when considering the decision?

That's not how I read it. But that could be the case.

Frankly looking at forums and around, the X11 auto-configuration has been a success, and I would like some money for every time a new openSUSE user had had an issue with graphics, and needed to be told to go to do an init 3 and run sax2!

I never had an issue using SaX2 from the desktop...........Only time I didn't have a working desktop was if I switched the hard drive between 2 laptops and one had a lower resolution display or switched video cards.

Everyone is better placed to say, we don't need sax2 now, whereas if Novell ppl had put sax2 in jeopardy beforehand it would have led to a lot of wasted time, based on (mostly) groundless fears.  What I have used today, instead of sax2 isn't perfect, but is near enough to not have worries for future on this.

For those running LCD's then it shouldn't be an issue. I never said losing SaX2 was bad so long as there were alternatives. Not having installed 11.2 on MY systems(just my son's) I don't know. But as a long time user, I did use SaX2 to drop my son's CRt's resolution for him because that was what I'm used to using.....

If the programs important, then with the code, you can pay someone to maintain it even if you lack the skills to work on it yourself.  If sax2 or KDE3 development was vital to businesses wouldn't it be possible to fund the work?  How many of the vociferous community moaners actually ever compiled KDE3 for themselves even once?

I've compiled everything at one time or another. And that was when compiling took a LONG time due to slow machines. However, your comment on business doesn't work since Linux is only on 1% of the market and a lot of those are probably servers with no X or seldom used X on older systems...... IF I was a programmer, or IF I wasn't poor, I would investigate continuing KDE3. However, that's not an option for me.....

Not having updates, does not mean software stops working the same as the day before, it's moth balling was announced.

That's why some people still use Mac OS 8 or 9. However, with the pace of kernel and open source development, things break much faster. Try installing Firefox 3.5.x on openSUSE 10.0 or S.u.S.E. 8(which came out around the time that XP did IIRC).

Now, one key difference, is with FOSS you can demonstrate noone can shutdown your software.  With commercial software, you're relying on say MS not deciding with something like Genuine Advantage to pull the plug on your release, or decide you broke your EULA. Those businesses you convert may have been stiffed by commercial software vendors in the past, exploiting their "sole sourcing" to increase their fees unreasonably.

BUT, it is still a valid concern. How would it look if they switched from Quickbooks, which has a long history and is still actively used, and the replacement went down within a short period of time. They may be willing to switch yet again, but they may also just switch back. Yes, M$ has some crappy policies. However, they are still providing updates for Windows 2000(generally - not always). How many Linux vendors are supporting a 10 year old OS? XP support it through at least 2014. The longest Linux server system is supported for what 5 years?

KDE4 made mistake of not co-existing gracefully with KDE3, so users could try it out, and then go back to KDE3 day to day once the curiousity & craving for novelty was satisfied.  I agree the KDE team in openSUSE made a mistake making KDE4 the preferred KDE in 11.1, with KDE3 relegated to "Other". Hopefully this spectacular embaressing experience, teaches other FOSS projects not to repeat over-optimistic promises based on vapour-ware, and to neglect compatability during transition for end-users. Trusting the distro's to do it, doesn't work.!!

KDE4 was just a disaster all the way around. No single group was to blame. While I'm all for starting over if it's needed, they alienated a lot of people for a good while. KDE showed the stability of the Linux desktop. To have such a huge change and then have it unstable didn't help Linux much.

But Sax2 is not a program any sane end-user wants to run regularly, it's a nice configurator for old X11 servers based on a static config file.  If the code has been written by GNOME & KDE already, then what's the point in duplicating the effort?

Never argue against that in the instance of SaX2.

Talking about the Windows world, how many are using the same virus scanner, spyware and word processor that they used 8 years ago?

I support some offices that use Word Perfect for DOS under Windows 98. I have another company that uses a DOS program under a NT4/Win98/XP network. Their point is WHY upgrade when it's not going to make things any easier and just cost me money. Granted, these are the exception, but I've been finding more and more that are leaning the same way. If Office 2003 works, why deal with the headache of 2007? M$'s constant changes hurt more than they help but it keeps me in business. Open source is actually harder to support in some ways because of the pace of development.

Asking permission to drop something in advance, is a recipe for time wasting!

Sometimes. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 12:23:17PM -0500, Larry Stotler wrote:

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Egbert Eich wrote:

...

Let me say it this way: If you tell a free software developer working on a specific project you want this and that feature in the project he will most likely only do something for you if he cares about the feature too. If he isn't intereseted you are on your own - but hey, it's free software, you can do something about it.

You can if you are a programmer and have the time to do the work. Or you can HOPE that someone else will step up, which often doesn't happen.

Yes, indeed. [...]

Lack of ability is the biggest problem. At least for someone like me.

One thing that has always bothered me about open source(and this is something I'm dealing with now with a project to convert a business to open source & linux) is that the open source people promote it as being a better alternative. However, if I switch someone to openSUSE from Windows because they need program A or feature B, and then the maintainers decide they aren't going to update it anymore, then you've pushed away an important new user. Plus, a lot of new stuff like KDE4 just doesn't have compelling reasons for old timers. I totally understand the need to attract new people, but if you are pushing people away then you have an almost static situation instead of a net gain. Of course, you can't cater to everyone, but it is a problem.

Yes, I know how this feels. I've fought this battle quite often and lost. For a relatively small crowd (like us at openSUSE and Novell) it is close to impossible to keep things around if a much larger crowd decides to change or abandon them. On 11.2 SaX2 has been deprecated but it works (as good or bad as it did on 11.1). I doubt that making this announcement earlier would have changed the situation significantly.

Personally, so long as the alternative works, then I'm not complaining. BUT, when things are promised but not delivered it creates a problem for the community. KDE4 was supposed to need LESS resources than KDE3 and that evaporated real fast. Now everyone is just told to upgrade(which is very difficult for some people considering the shape of the economy in the world today). Some, like my son, like a lot of the new stuff in KDE4. Others like myself just see the fluff and don't see the point in it when we just want something that works and is stable. KDE4 is finally becoming stable and more usable, but it was a rough road and many decisions were made which hurt it(and not just by the devs. distros that pushed it out way too soon like Fedora should have known better).

In the end, an open source project still needs its community. The developers put this stuff out to encourage people to use it. If they aren't going to make a commitment to maintain it without a viable or better alternative, then they are in some ways hurting the uptake of open source software, and uptake is something we all want to see continue. That's why we are all here. Devs and users alike.

It often doesn't work that way. Devs often have high flying goals and discover in the end the hard way that they cannot deliver. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 02:20:14AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 12:20 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:

...

...

This may sound hostile but it is not: openSUSE is free software just like SaX2. If people feel SaX2 is still of great value why can't they step up and take it over?

Maybe we don't have the skills to do it.

...

This was the whole purpose of my original email. As a free software developer who has devoted a lot of his spare time on developing free software I always found the demanding attitude of some users very inappropriate. This is no different regarding the demands made on Novell.

We are users. We use. We don't "dev". We ask for what we want/need. We can not do it ourselves.

Ok, that's fine. I don't expect everybody using openSUSE to be a developer. But hey, if we want openSUSE to be a long term success story the community around it that is able to do some sort of development needs to be a *lot* larger than those people at Novell involved with it in one way or the other. Please note: reporting bugs is good (especially if the bug reports are useful) but it takes people to fix those bugs. If there aren't enough bugs won't get fixed.

We can help in some other ways, but we cant develop or maintain.

In other words, we see you as our "suppliers".

Ok - who does 'you' refer to - besides me personally? Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

...

Please note: reporting bugs is good (especially if the bug reports are useful) but it takes people to fix those bugs. If there aren't enough bugs won't get fixed.

...

We can help in some other ways, but we cant develop or maintain.

In other words, we see you as our "suppliers".

Ok - who does 'you' refer to - besides me personally?

:-)

Novell, Suse...

This is exactly the point I've been trying to make: openSUSE won't succeed in the long run if people don't abandon the idea that Novell is able to deliver openSUSE to the extent it has done so in the past. I find this notion way too often in postings on this list. I can only repeat myself: for openSUSE to become a long term success it needs more people involved than the ones presently working on it. Folks please stop asking what Novell can do for openSUSE but start asking how you can contribute to openSUSE. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/12/3 Carlos E. R. :

...

This may sound hostile but it is not: openSUSE is free software just like SaX2. If people feel SaX2 is still of great value why can't they step up and take it over?

Maybe we don't have the skills to do it.

...

This was the whole purpose of my original email. As a free software developer who has devoted a lot of his spare time on developing free software I always found the demanding attitude of some users very inappropriate. This is no different regarding the demands made on Novell.

We are users. We use. We don't "dev". We ask for what we want/need. We can not do it ourselves. We can help in some other ways, but we cant develop or maintain.

In other words, we see you as our "suppliers".

GNU & FOSS server applications got a foothold and community who then desired an OS unencumbered by commercial license. This software ran on proprietary hardware, mostly running the vendor UNIX. But it made sense for the community to share code, so the pool of contributors increased. There was always an exchange of skills going on. Some openSUSE user may be an expert in a particular application area, or simply test chipset & hard disk controllers on a new release. This may benefit X developers later, when they become users of the application software, or use mainboards with derivatives of the tested parts. The majority may not be able to hack C, or write good scripts, or have the skill set to build applications and package them. But what everyone can do, is use the distro and write bug reports. Then when a program is dropped, look at the alternatives and make sure the use cases are covered reasonably. Some of those users, with time become experts, or pick up skills needed to contribute better, the majority will always be passive consumers for any given source base. 2009/12/3 Egbert Eich :

On Wednesday, 2009-12-02 at 12:20 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:

I personally doubt that it would have made a huge difference had we communicated things early on in the 11.2 release cycle. I've seen bug reports for X coming in. Many of the rather obvious and quite visible bugs have not been reported until the 2 or 3 weeks prior to the release.

So how to improve that situation? I think the online upgrade, helps lower the bar. To interest ppl in testing the new features, communication is important. Perhaps having feedback on what hardware has been tested, would encourage folk to see they can make a useful contribution, by donating a few spare hours. When testing the general release, frankly I'm looking more at how the installer & new kernel perform, and for any signs of problems that might not be easily solved by updates post GM. It actually can be quite time consuming submitting bug reports, and then trying to respond to them promptly. This it is always going to be a temptation, to ignore "rather obvious and quite visible bugs", precisely because they are going to be reported by others who tend to be highly sensitive to cosmetic issues. Not all of the developers & support who respond to bugzilla reports, appear pleased & accepting of bug reports, nor is it always clear that something is happening to solve the issue. So anything that requires description, and cannot be simply shown via logs, is less attractive to report by a rationalist. Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 05:00:51PM +0100, Lubos Lunak wrote:

...

...

about the rest if they don't know xinitrc, huh? Is that far off or did I guess right? Are now each desktop really to do the X setup during their startup whenever X doesn't get something right?

No, it is to do the user customization. This has been the case for the keyboard for a long time already. KDE (as you may know) has offered a tray applet which allows to change keyboard layouts on the fly. It even allowed to configure each keyboard layout in the list in great detail.

Too bad it has never allowed the configuration of the keyboard layout in KDM.

This is not an openSUSE problem, though. It's more an issue of the upstream projects not watching each other. I know that in X.Org fundamental changes often just happen without much discussion or announcement. The nuisance of an developers IRC channel has certainly contributed to that. Even the people working on X.Org here are sometimes caught by surprise. Still in this particular instance here I was strongly believing that someone in the KDE community had taken note since the move away from a static configuration file is not something that has happened behind closed doors.

...

Even for mode setting KDE has been supplying krandrtray which may not be as powerful as the gnome tool at the moment but does its job reasonable well.

During the session. Not so well if X e.g. decides that a great default setup for dualhead desktop machine is cloned mode and one has to go for xinitrc or do the change manually

No, you do the change once (in the desktop tool, this will remember your settings and redo them next time.) This will of course only work if the framebuffer stride (which is static still) is large enough.

...

But Lubos, why are you complaining here and rant at me? It has never been my suggestion that every desktop is reinventing the wheel and comes along with its own incarnation of every tool.

Sorry, you're the messenger. And I'm not complaining about the suggestion for every desktop to roll their own, as much as I don't like that, but I'm now complaining about those desktops not having been told in time.

Again, I'm sorry, but I thought that in the huge KDE upstream community someone had an eye on such things. Having a keyboard layout selector in the display manager isn't something that's brand new: SUN had this for ages - my impression was that the major desktops look around and 'steal' good ideas they find elsewhere. Cheers, Egbert. -- Egbert Eich (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH X Window System Development Tel: +49 911-740 53 0 http://www.suse.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org