Re: Does LXDE really require lightdm?
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:34:54 -0400
> Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 6:01 AM, Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Sunday 22 June 2014 01:31:50 Steve Litt wrote:
>>>> The whole reason I'm switching from Xubuntu to Debian is to get
>>>> away from both Plymouth and *dm.
>>>
>>> I hadn't heard of Plymouth. I just googled it and blanched. Thanks
>>> for the heads up, Steve! One more reason why I shall avoid
>>> *buntu. :-(
>>
>> (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.
The issue isn't whether it's deserved or not but whether it belongs on
this list.
>> 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.
>
> 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
> complexity. Gnome2->Gnome3, Gnome2->Unity, Kmail->kmail2, and
> Grub->Grub2. And of course, when troubleshooting Grub2, every time you
> want to see results of a change, you need to reboot. What could
> *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.
>
> 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).
> 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.
So your problem(s) might stem from grub, kms, or plymouth or any
combination of two or three of them but plymouth is the guilty party.
And you can't even be bothered to change the grub settings to try to
remedy your problems. You'expenced and intelligent enough to know
better. But if you feel like ranting, rant away! :)
>> 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.
>
> 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
> functional, graphical boots, framebuffer boots, enforced GUI login just
> get in the way.
I don't consider myself pro-plymouth. It's just that it's the default
on RHEL6 (and I spend 11/12 hours per day on those systems - although
not booting and rebooting!) and Fedora and Ubuntu, so I just have and
"use" them. Same as for systemd. Once Debian and Ubuntu force me (I
suspect that in Debian's case it'll be with jessie+1) to switch, I'll
initially miss sysvinit and upstart but after 3-4 years it'll be a
case of out of sight, out of mind.
I dual-boot Ubuntu and Fedora on my laptop. I have the bootsplash off
for both and I don't have any problems. There's a video reset when the
initramfs switches over but that's it. I've installed Ubuntu on my
parents' and my neighbor's laptops and they don't have any problems
with the bootsplash on.
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