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On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 23:25 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> On Monday 18 January 2010 22:47:05 Dale wrote: |
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> > In that case, ctrl alt F1 does nothing. You also need to understand |
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> > that most people don't even know how to use SysRq keys. I didn't and |
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> > had to do a hard shutdown. I had to actually pull the plug to do any |
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> > good. Luckily I knew how to get it to boot into single user mode so I |
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> > could disable hal otherwise I would be right back on the same screen |
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> > again with no mouse or keyboard. It would be really bad if even that |
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> > didn't work with devicekit. I'm not sure how it couldn't but we never |
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> > know do we? |
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> |
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> Dale's experiences highlight a very important and very fundamental rule of |
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> desktop system design: |
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> |
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> As a developer you must completely and totally guarantee to the full limit of |
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> what is feasible, that the user will always have a usable keyboard, mouse and |
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> display after the desktop has launched. You can fallback to VGA resolution and |
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> the most basic keyboard layout possible if you need to, but you must give the |
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> user something and never leave them stranded. Anything else is just an epic |
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> fail. |
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My 2c worth is this: In any other distribution, the xorg/hal update |
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would have been configured so that Dale's (sorry to keep using you as an |
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example :) keyboard / mouse was working. But this is Gentoo. You ARE |
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the distributor AND the end user. Conflicts in libraries / packages are |
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up to you to resolve. |
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About 3-4 people use Gentoo at work, and at least 2 were hit by the |
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keyboard/mouse not working bug in xorg when it moved to HAL. With a bit |
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of fuddling, remerging, and so on, we got it working in both cases. |
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So yes, the developer must give a fallback method of using the |
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keyboard / mouse, but not against the incorrectly packaged / configured |
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system. In Gentoo you often end up with an incorrect system, hence |
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revdep-rebuild and so on. |
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|
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-- |
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Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au> |
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It's more than magnificent-it's mediocre. -Samuel Goldwyn |
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