Re: You can have any color you want - as long as it's Gnome?
On 10/07/2013 09:37 AM, davidson@ling.ohio-state.edu wrote:
On Sun, 6 Oct 2013, Jape Person wrote:
On 10/06/2013 05:33 PM, davidson@ling.ohio-state.edu wrote:
On Sun, 6 Oct 2013, Jape Person wrote:
For both stable and testing I tried both LXDE and Xfce desktop
environment installations. But when the systems rebooted, I was at
the Gnome desktop.
[snip]
is it possible that [the display manager at login] did offer you a
choice (via, say, a drop-down menu or something), with gnome
pre-selected as the default?
No, I suppose I should have mentioned that. The default choice (from
lightdm) was "default xsession". The only other choice in the
dropdown on the login was gnome. I didn't see Xfce listed at all.
okay, i see. interesting. that is more misbehavior than is reported
thus far at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=718855 .
the absence of Xfce from the DM selections---that is missing from the
report. the report just says Xfce isn't the default selection in
lightdm.
I hope that is actually the case. I am sober now and not kibbitzing with my
buddies, but don't have much time. If I can get some free time I'll try again
with my eyes open and taking notes for a possible contribution to the bug report.
I say I hope that is the case, because that would mean that a new user could
install one of these lightweight environments and just deal temporarily with the
dross until the package management / dependency issues are fixed, at which time
the upgrade process might offer to remove gnome during an upgrade. Of course,
that would probably confuse the heck out of 'em, too, wouldn't it?
I think that was on the stable installations. I didn't even check
when I saw gnome pop up after logging on on the subsequent attempts
to install LXDE or Xfce stable or testing installations. I just
started over, because I didn't want to leave these folks with
systems that had so much extraneous stuff on them. I mean, it was
hundreds of megabytes, not just a few packages. It was the whole
gnome DE.
yeah, i hear you.
ps: i did a recent install for a friend, as well, and i believe we ran
into bug #718855, too. it does break the principle of least surprise,
but it did not prevent us from selecting an xfce session from the
display manager. (at least, i don't *think* i had to do anything more
fu-intensive than select xfce from a drop-down in the DM greeter.
memory is a little fuzzy.)
That's very interesting. On the early installations done this weekend
I added some software from within aptitude in TTY1 before trying to
log on. I wonder if that variable had anything to do with the
difference.
i'll have to pay better attention on my next install, and take some
notes. whatever i did[1], i ended up with a wheezy installation with
both gnome and Xfce selectable from the display manager.
I'm inclined to think that -- if one of us did something unusual to the clean
installation -- it was probably me. The, ah, neurological manifestations of
fermented grape and the social dynamics (wise-asses and wisecracks) could not
have been conducive to precise use of the CLI and aptitude following those
initial installations.
i aimed for variety over minimalism, i made no effort to exclude
gnome, and in fact was happy to have it included. however, like you
say...
Still, even if one were to be given the choice of logging on to an
Xfce session, how many people would be happy with this outcome of
the installation process? I mean, I guess most people go with LXDE
or Xfce because they don't want something as big as gnome or kde
sitting on their systems.
yeah, definitely. for installations valuing minimalism over variety,
bringing in gnome would not be a welcome side effect at all.
Yup.
Attempting to get a clean Xfce and / or LXDE installation from both
stable and testing and getting hundreds of megabytes of gnome is
just weird.
totally agree. btw, i don't see LXDE mentioned in bug 718855.
speaking of which,...
Yeah, and that definitely happened. The LXDE installation was done by a friend
with some sysadmin experience taking directions from me. I watched him do the
Expert installation of lxde properly, and we got a Gnome desktop the first time
he logged in from lightdm.
I can see how it happens, but I wouldn't think that the Xfce or LXDE
maintainers would be very happy about it. Yet I don't see any
comments from them on the bug report.
well, so far it looks like
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=718855 talks about
how installing Xfce brings in gnome, and fails to make Xfce the
default session selection.
i don't see any mention there about the DM omitting Xfce as a session
choice.
and i see no mention of LXDE at all, though the lxde package
recommends network-manager-gnome as well.
Yeah, I really hope to get some time to check this out. Still, wouldn't you
think the maintainers and release team would have seen this???
It wasn't hard to fix, but I'm sure it would really mess up a new
user.
sure would. definitely.
If I get time this week I may just do some testing of the installation
process to confirm what I remember.
sounds good. same here. one way or another, it looks like the bug
report could use some supplementary info.
Thank you for your observation. It's given me something to mull
over.
likewise. see you at the bug report.
cheers,
wes
[1] hmm. now, thinking it over in the light of day, i might well have
apt-gotten the xfce4 package from a console, post-installation, and
then cherry-picked other Xfce packages that looked useful. maybe.
whatever it was, i now doubt it was whatever a new user would be
likely to do.
I am hopeful that following installation we'll see that Xfce is offered as a
choice in the dropdown, and that new users installing it will get to use Xfce
and will lose Gnome (assuming they wish to do so) when the problem with
dependencies is fixed. Obviously, the same thoughts apply for lxde.
But if it happens that way, I bet we'll be seeing some folks here asking if they
should let aptitude / apt / synaptic remove a half gig of packages during their
morning upgrade!
;-)
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