Re: Does LXDE really require lightdm?
On Fri 27 Jun 2014 at 13:40:48 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:34:54 -0400
> Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > (The regular sniping at Ubuntu on this list reflects badly on Debian
> > users in general and on this list's users in particular...)
>
> I don't think so. I think the sniping is well deserved, and unique to
> bad aspects of Ubuntu. I haven't heard one person gripe about Ubuntu's
> easy and readable fonts, or Ubuntu's great hardware detection. But
> when it comes to Plymouth, people gripe. It's the biggest of several
> reasons I switched to Debian from Ubuntu for my daily driver.
Debian's plymouth man page says that the option 'splash' is required on
the kernel command line for the configured default theme to be loaded
during boot. It follows from that that removing 'splash' from the
command line means booting doesn't use the default theme. You switched
from Ubuntu to Debian because it was easier than changing the command
line option?
> > There's a lot of crap on the internet about plymouth.
> >
> > Ubuntu defaulted to both plymouth and kms with 10.04 and because one
> > of plymouth's roles is to provide a bootsplash it was blamed for the
> > lack of a pure text console or for video boot problems.
>
> OK, here's what I know: My monitor (and please don't tell me to spend
> $250 for one that "does it better") takes several seconds to autodetect
> a resolution change, including the framebuffer, which Plymouth changes
> several times during boot. So I miss most of the boot messages.
>
> And by the way, the Plymouth-bestowed framebuffer has type too small
> for me to read well. All I wanted: I mean *ALL* I wanted, was to have
> my boot messages scroll up the screen as ASCII text like 1999 RedHat.
> Is that such a huge request? Apparently yes, when Plymouth gets
> involved.
If you couldn't find out how to disable plymouth, well.......
> I know, I know, if I understood Grub 2 I could fix all these problems.
> Yeah, exactly. Grub 2 is one of a long list of softwares that fixed a
> nonexistent problem and turned their product into an entangled mess of
If you do not understand grub you obviously don't know what real
problems it fixed. This is just a case of putting the boot in.
> complexity. Gnome2->Gnome3, Gnome2->Unity, Kmail->kmail2, and
> Grub->Grub2.
Seems like a both boot job is in progress.
> And of course, when troubleshooting Grub2, every time you
> want to see results of a change, you need to reboot. What could
Grub is a *boot loader*. What do you expect it to do? Mind read?
> *possibly* go wrong. And don't forget, when you look on the web for
> info on how to work with Grub2, you see all sorts of conflicting
> information.
Ill-informed information always conflicts with good information. "info
grub" helps you to discriminate.
> So you know what? Plymouth sux big time, especially when packaged with
> Grub2 and lightdm (and who knows what systemd will throw into the mix).
Your boots have got into top gear here and increased their kicking rate.
What have lightdm and the poor old systemd done to deserve your ire?
> If I've reflected badly on the list, well gee, I'm sorry, but as a 7
> year Ubuntu user, I have more than a passing acquaintance with
> Plymouth, and I view it as 100% sabotage.
7 years? And you didn't find out how to disable it?
> > There were some purely plymouth problems (for example, it initially
> > wouldn't display a progress bar when a partition was being fsck'd) but
> > the whole anti-plymouth thing is very much overdone.
>
> I think the whole pro-plymouth thing is very much overdone. Really, I
> don't need decorative gegaws or framebuffers on my virtual terminals. I
> need text I can read, and if there's a boot problem, text I can
> troubleshoot with.
Syslog.
> All I want from Linux is something that works, and that I can repair
> with a few tools. If I wanted pretty, I'd be an Apple guy. If I wanted
> commodity pseudo-pretty in an entanged mess best maintained with trial
> and error, I'd get Windows. But I want functional. When you want
These boots really were made for kicking.
> functional, graphical boots, framebuffer boots, enforced GUI login just
> get in the way.
>
> Plymouth sux!
Plymouth can be disabled at boot time by removing "splash" from the
kernel command line. Removing "quiet" may also be a good thing. I hope
this technical information helps you if you ever go back to Ubuntu.
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