On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 03:15:34AM +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Sunday 2008-09-21 at 02:50 +0200, Robert Kaiser wrote:
I'd prefer being asked before launching sax2.
Why? With what I wrote, you can still cancel it easily and have no changes applied anywhere. Unknowing users are right in the mode where they can correct the problem by usually just click something like "use this proposed configuration" or however it's worded and it launches up their usual graphical system right away. _That_ is user-friendliness.
Because chances are I may know better what to repair, and I do not want to have to wait for sax to initialize its stuff before canceling it.
Than you're already on a different knowledg level. Maybe not yet at the same (ignorant) one as Eberhard - sorry Eberhard, but with your attitude you had been able to readjust my computer habit 15 years ago but you'll not convince any Linux newbee of today.
For instance, I may be using the proprietary nvidia driver installed manually, and forgot to deactivate it after a kernel upgrade, before recompiling the driver. I can manually edit the single line to nv instead of running sax.
You are an advanced user. Someone starting will not know about the pain of third party drivers and all the side effects.
Or I may be using a manually tailored config file, prepared for several monitors and drivers, and so prepared to edit a line or two to select which one to use today.
Corner cases compared to the non working config this discussion is about.
I thus prefer being given the choice of what to do. I have no objection to firing sax2 at a simple keypress, but not unasked. Remember that linux should cater both for experts and for novices.
Even that would be better. The question is how the question to the user should look like. To me it has to be as simple as possible and the default confirmation button must lead to a working X again. The 'no, I need the Eberhard whip' should only be the non default, second option. Simply present the current workflow to users working in the social sience area. I only had been able to convince two of such in more than ten years to use Linux as the _only_ operating system. And several times it had been a non working X setup - even without any changes to the hardware - stopping them to continue their work. Even without propriatory drivers. A 'normal' user uses the computer to solve non computer problems. At the end in the huge majority of cases a simple call to sax solved the issue. And that's where Robert hit the nail central on the head. To stress it very clear: I don't like to kick advanced users like Eberhard into their back - even if Eberhard has deserved this on a regular base anyhow ;). For users on this level we need a sysconfig setting to disable any automatic startup of sax. We might even display this opportinity as a hint if we start sax automatically on boot. I'm very happy to address the concerns of advanced users. But in this case an automatically starting sax looks like an huge advantage to the majority of users compared to the disadvantages we cause to experienced users. Would such a sysconfig configurable solution be an acceptable tradeoff? If yes I'll summarize the discussion and file a feature request to get this addressed by the development of upcoming releases. Lars -- Lars Müller [ˈlaː(r)z ˈmʏlɐ] Samba Team SuSE Linux, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany