Hi Ralph, Thanks for all your information and explanations on Arch Linux!
On Tue, 01 Aug 2017 11:40:05 +0100 Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> sez: > > I have a sufficiently non-standard install. Specifically, I prefer to > > use ctwm instead of any of the modern "desktops" > > Arch Linux's install media leaves one at a VT with a shell. > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide runs > through the next steps, Internet access, partitioning, > installing the core packages, and finishes with references to > other wiki pages about common packages. So you get to choose > if X might be useful, what window manager, etc. There are > packages that just depend on lots of others so Gnomers can get > their fix easily. Oh, that's very nice! Most importantly for me, example shell commands are given in the guide. The 3 major and 1.5 minor reasons I use the Gnome tools (and panel) are: 1. Update management -- I *really* don't want to be a full-time sys-admin again, and the major reason I liked Ubuntu was that it took care of all that for me. I just logged into the "update" user I created for myself, clicked on the "Update Manager" icon in the Gnome session, and let it do its thing. If Arch Linux makes it that easy (or there's a way to configure it to do so, so that I control *whether* an update happens, but otherwise it's automatic), then that works for me! 2. Network management -- specifically, for WiFi access. 3. Printer management -- specifically, to change printer configuration (e.g. double-sided vs. single-sided) prior to a print job. 4. Hardware temperature monitoring -- for which I use the psensor(1) application that is launched by Ghome panel, although anything that provides me a running visual would suffice. 4.5 gkrellm(1), the Gnome GUI for the Krell hardware monitors. There's probably some other GUI I can use. One complication of this is that the certain Gnome applications can be randomly restarted when some monitoring daemon is poked, which in my situation sometimes leads to gnome-screensaver(1) being restarted. If I then suspend my laptop, when I awaken it, the appropriate hooks are not in place, and thus *none* of my input devices (keyboard, mouse, trackpad) does anything -- and I need to hard-reboot. (I've created scripts to prevent this and similar Gnome-annoyances.) Not having to deal with this would be a *very* nice bonus! > > I need to see what has changed since my last OS update, which usually > > means figuring out the new way to do XYZ -- and that's what typically > > causes this to balloon to days > > With a rolling release, this tends to be a steady trickle of > incremental package upgrades, most don't bother me, and when > one does other users are in the same boat *now* so the solution > is normally easy to find, e.g. top thread on the forum, rather > than digging about for something from months ago when "testing" > users first encountered it. Woot! B-) > > is it trivially easy to undo a package's upgrade? > > As a rolling release, a package can assume your other packages > are up to date so there's not the "pinning" of one package at > an old version whilst the rest move on. I think you can do it, > but it's explicitly not supported. > > The repo has the current packages. There's an > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archive that has the > previous ones, and I used that once for the Nvidia problem that > stopped graphics working. Hmm ... this gives me *slight* pause, but probably as long as my shell and NMH don't unexpectedly change then I can probably deal with it. B-) Since there's a repo of packages, I can (probably) just install an older version and cross my fingers that the newer versions of libraries it depends on won't break the older build. Bob _______________________________________________ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers