Re: X

[Pigeon <jah.pigeon@ukonline.co.uk>]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 06:22:27PM +0000, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> on Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 07:35:52PM +0000, Pigeon (jah.pigeon@ukonline.co.uk) wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 06:37:02AM +0000, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > > on Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 05:43:42PM -0700, Glenn English (ghe@slsware.com) wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 2003-03-23 at 14:54, Leo Spalteholz wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > Sorry this won't help you but I've always wondered why debian does
> > > > > this.  You install xdm and the defualt is to boot straight into a
> > > > > graphical login.  Why??  At the very least it should ask you when
> > > > > installing if you want to start up into  X.  
> > 
> > Well said.
> > 
> > > Debian assumes you wouldn't have installed X if you didn't want it
> > > starting automatically. 
> > 
> > Why? It's reasonable for Windoze to be installed with "BootGUI=1"
> > because you can do naff-all in DOS mode. But with Linux you can do
> > MORE from the command line than the GUI tools. The assumption is not
> > justified. The GUI becomes something you can use when you need it (web
> > browsing, gimp, etc) rather than something you have to use all the
> > time.
> 
> As several people have noted (and I should have written -- I know
> better):  Debian assumes if you install an *X displya manager* (xdm,
> gdm, kdm, wdm, etc.), you want it to run.

This is fine; the thread is the better for this confusion having been
cleared up.

> And in general:  Debian assumes a certain level of familiarity with the
> system.  If you're advanced enough to know that you have the option to
> choose or avoid a GUI boot screen, you'd be assumed to know how to deal
> with the situation (or where to go to ask).

To assume a certain amount of intelligence is fine, and is how I
perceive Debian. To assume a certain amount of familiarity with the
system is a bit iffy if you haven't installed the system before.

(When I bought slink on CD the O'Reilly book "Learning Debian
GNU/Linux" came with it. Someone said recently that this is now out of
print. This is a great shame.)

I'm not sure that it's particularly 'advanced' to know that a GUI boot
is optional. Plenty of people know about DOS and Windoze... in the
days of Windoze 3.x and earlier, people would often be booting into
DOS to use all their DOS-only stuff, starting Windoze when they needed
it for Windoze stuff. And it seems that games players would be
starting 95 and later in DOS mode to run games. Or there are people
like me, switching to Linux in order to dump this GUI stuff and get
back to a command line. Which isn't the same as saying that you'll
necessarily be proficient at using said command line when you've just
installed a new system and therefore haven't had time to learn it yet.

> There *are* a number of consumer-grade GNU/Linux distributions, aimed at
> the newbie.  A surprising number (Lindows, Xandros, Progeny, Corel
> GNU/Linux) are or have been based on Debian.

It would be interesting to know how they tackle this issue, especially
with regard to initial misconfiguration of X.

> > For me, one of the great attractions of Linux is the power of the
> > command line. When I first installed debian (slink) I didn't bother
> > installing X for quite a while, until I needed it for something that
> > produced graphical output. The next time I rebooted and got a
> > completely unexpected graphical login, I was both shocked and furious.
> > 
> > This question is asked pretty often on this list, so it seems
> > reasonable to assume that plenty of people do not want to boot
> > straight into X.
> > 
> > > And that you'd know how to disable it from
> > > doing so via update-rc.d.
> > 
> > How is someone who has just installed it for the first time supposed
> > to know this? Plenty of people don't. We know they don't, because
> > they keep asking the list.
> 
> ...where, it might be said, we're happy to answer.
> 
> ...and, it might be added, a Google search will reveal such resources
> as:
> 
> > >     http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/xdm-disable.html

Which is both true and cool, but doesn't invalidate the point...

> > > 
> > > > > A friend of mine recently installed debian and whenever he rebooted
> > > > > it started x and then hung his machine.  He doesn't have enough
> > > > > experience to know how to circumvent this and therefore had to do a
> > > > > complete reinstall.  
> > 
> > Which is what would have happened to a friend of mine recently if I
> > hadn't done the installation for him and known to take out xdm.
> > 
> > > Silly boy.  Debian doesn't require reinstalls.  Hell, a friend trashed
> > > his /var partition and recovered (well, rebuilt) without a reinstall.
> > > Not recommended.  But possible.
> > 
> > The two abovementioned friends, being totally new, did not know this...
> 
> It seems to be your beef is this:
> 
>   - Debian is accessible enough that newbies (either to GNU/Linux, or to
>     Debian), can use it.
> 
>   - Such admins can make significant modifications to the base system,
>     readily, via apt-get, dselect (though we'd recommend against it),
>     aptitude, synaptic (IIRC), and other package manager front-ends.
>     Note in general that this level of configurability  *isn't*
>     available in, say, Red Hat, SuSE, or Mandrake (all RPM based
>     distributions).  At *many* technically minded shops, and by this I
>     include webhosting companies with years of experience, VA (Research|
>     Linux|Software|Whatever), and Red Hat itself, SOP is to do a kitchen
>     sink install.  RH's own default of managing X display managers
>     through inittab is in part testiment to the difficulty of managing
>     packages via RPM.  It was the ease with which I could install, and
>     delete, packages from Debian which sold me on the distro in 1999.
> 
>   - That with this power at hand, admins get themselves into situations
>     thay're not fully familiar with.  And they don't ask questions in
>     the right places.

Not quite. The point is that someone installing Debian for the first
time, and choosing to have the X Window System installed, gets xdm
installed as well by default. And though "we'd recommend against it",
the installer uses dselect. So it's entirely possible that they don't
realise xdm has been installed at all; or they take the description of
xdm to mean that you have to install it to use X at all; or they
realise they don't want/need it, but can't get dselect to accept this
decision; or they think they don't want/need it, but change their mind
when dselect starts acting the ass.

So they end up booting into a graphical login, which many people
didn't want or expect. Worse, if the initial X config is up the spout
(as it often is), the machine may be hung, or have its video card
scrambled, and is therefore useless.

> Ignorance is cureable, idiocy isn't.  I don't expect people to know the
> intricacies of Debian straight off the top.  I *do* expect a clued
> system administrator to start looking at docs, asking the local guru,
> searching Google, and online support fora when their system starts
> acting in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

Having a hung machine can make this difficult...

> I also expect that
> they'll be reasonable and respectful in their online discourse.

Sure, I can't condone "OT: FLAME: Linux Sucks". Hope I haven't
offended you; I wasn't intending to.

> Yes, it's an educational issue.  If you can think of a better way of
> addressing this, I think we'll be receptive.

- Have the installer ask whether or not you want a graphical login

- Amend the description of xdm to make it clearer that you don't need
  xdm to use X:

> Description: X display manager
>  xdm manages a collection of X servers, which may be on the local host or
>  remote machines.  It provides services similar to those provided by init,
>  getty, and login on character-based terminals: prompting for login name and
>  password, authenticating the user, and running a session.  xdm supports XDMCP
>  (X Display Manager Control Protocol) and can also be used to run a chooser
>  process which presents the user with a menu of possible hosts that offer
>  XDMCP display management.

  People doing a first-time installation read this and think things like
  "well, if I use X, I'll be running a session, so I'll need xdm" or
  maybe "well, I'll need this to log into X, because if I can't log into
  it how could I use it" or "X servers need managing, do they? OK, well
  I guess I'll need this to manage them". And it hardly makes it clear
  that if you install xdm you'll boot straight into a graphical login.
  
- Change the installer to default to something easier to use than
  dselect, or make dselect easier to use (especially in terms of its
  insistence on installing recommends/suggests, and its obstinacy when
  you try to ovveride these). At present it's "start with tasksel,
  fine-tune with dselect", which seems a bit sub-optimal to me.

> Note in the case you'd mentioned, you *installed additional software*,
> then noted a change in behavior.  My first attack would be to
> double-check what I'd just installed, and see if maybe something got
> onto the system I'd not anticipated.

Sure. When it happened to me with slink, I had the O'Reilly book,
had used Unix a long time ago, and had had slink installed for a few
weeks already without X. So it didn't take me too long to get
from 'ps ax' to 'rm /etc/rc?.d/S99gdm' (as it was in slink). But I was
fortunate enough to have a crappy old video card which ran quite
happily using all the standard VGA settings, so I had no problems with
X not actually working. But my friend who I have just done an
installation for has a video chipset which is not properly supported -
it doesn't even work with generic SVGA - and his initial X config was
illegible. Better than hung, I suppose. (And he's not on the net, so
I'm doing the downloading of drivers to fix it.)

> <Additional confusion over X v. [xgkw]dm elided>
> 
> 
> > > X is only installed if you request it.  And as with other services, when
> > > installed, SysV init is updated so that the service is automatically
> > > started.
> > 
> > ... so that *xdm* is automatically started. Which you don't actually
> > need on the machine at all. But the new user doesn't know this. Even
> > if they notice that xdm has been installed along with X, they'll just
> > assume that it's been installed because you do need it. Which you
> > don't, unless you've asked for a graphical login. Which is a choice
> > you don't get offered.
> 
> At this point we part company:  a system admin (note that they're not
> just a user, they're administering the system) needs to have a basic
> situational awareness of what they have on their system, and what it's
> doing.  I'm not saying this is a trivial task.  I'm saying that if
> you're not up to the challenge, you're in no position to be
> administering your own system.  Either pay someone else to do so for
> you, or use a prepackaged system which you don't modify.

The trouble is it's a pretty impossible task if your newly-installed
system has booted straight into X and screwed up. Those whose X config
does work are lucky. They can gain such awareness, by poking around on
the system, asking the list or whatever. But it does seem to me that
it would save a lot of people a lot of trouble if the X installation /
configuration process were to explicitly ask whether you want a
graphical login, and I don't see why this should not be asked.

I fully agree with the need to learn about your system. It puzzles me
that nobody expects to be able to drive a car without learning about
it, but expect to be able to use a far more complex computer system
with nary a thought. At the same time, cars, unlike computers, have
controls which don't make you jump through hoops, and you don't have
to learn to drive before you can read the car's handbook. (Though with
the advent of this daft "Knob" from BMW, or is it Mercedes, I begin to
worry that this may soon no longer be the case...)

Pigeon