> Then I have a .xsessionrc which needs to exist because I now log in through xdm, and the window manager (fluxbox) ends up inheriting that environment. Yep, it doesn't get a .bashrc type thing applied to it. (Not gonna lie - this took a while to figure out.
I've grown fond of just logging in via the tty and invoking startx... it's always there, even when your graphics drivers fail. I tried messing with xdms a long time ago when transitioning to i3wm, but it was just extra configuration, noise and inconsistency to sort out, without really gain anything useful for what is a single person machine. Simple is good.
> it's always there, even when your graphics drivers fail.
This sentence is jaw dropping to me. Maybe I'm not the target audience for this sort of ultra minimalist, ultra customised environment, but the concept of requiring a workaround because my graphics drivers aren't functional is something I cannot understand. Why would you willingly work in that environment? In the last decade of being a professional programmer, my graphics drivers have _never_ failed me to that level. They're not perfect, but they _never_ fail to initialise.
> the concept of requiring a workaround because my geaphics drivers aren't functional is something I cannot understand
It's not a workaround, it's just a perk, when I moved to "ultra customized" as you put it, you don't want to have to configure masses of stuff, i3wm is good for this, it's pretty minimal to configure... an XDM was just more work to configure, but with little utility from my perspective, also I work on the cli a lot so it doesn't feel unnatural to be welcomed by a tty.
And yeah the final perk, Linux wasn't always so compatible, and even in more recent history nVidia graphics drivers can still be problematic. About 10 years ago i think, I used Linux on a 2008 MBP, and freeBSD actually, those things had craptastic nVidia GPUs, you know the batch that came with the first gen unleaded soldier fiasco and when nVidia lied to apple about their thermal specs before they had a falling out and everyone got their GPUs underclocked in firmware to push failures out of warrantee - i digress - anyway the linux support for any nvidia stuff back then was terrible, and very flimsy on dual GPU laptops. For Apple it was more tricky still because you needed to write an Apple specific gmux switcher before even attempting to boot with the nvidia driver, and if that actually worked when you start X then you would lose visual access to your tty because it had no modsetting support... which ironically made using tty instead of an xdm a disadvantage for when the graphics driver failed once in X... I sometimes tried to bring it back to life essentially blindfolded on the tty if X died, mixed success.
Point is, on any laptop with nvidia back then, you usually had to do some level of mucking around on the tty anyway before being able to depend on anything graphical like an xdm... and pray it doesn't break on the next driver update. Frankly right now, we are living in Linux utopia, a lot of hardware "just works".
I remember those times, had the unpleasant experience of having nvidia graphics on my laptops in the past.
It’s been almost ten years now, and i just stay away from nvidia hardware. If a laptoo has an nvidia gpu I’ll look for something else (I don’t care about noveau, if I’m spending money I might as well buy something that just works).
Same here. I think support has become a little better but the attitude is pretty much the same, I just stick to Intel and AMD now. Thankfully there is also way more officially supported hardware these days too.
1) This sort of nonsense is why people don't use these environments
and
2) Just because something worked like that 15 years ago, doesn't mean it's a good reason to still do that now.
I cannot fathom how _anyone_ would tolerate that in a world where Windows and MacOS (and I guess to a certain extent various linux flavors) exist and "just work", for anything other than tinkering.
It's subjective, tty "just works" for me, not you. Just because mac and windows "just works" for you doesn't mean that's true for everyone else's purposes, it certainly isn't for me, they create immense friction for me.
More is not universally better, there is no functional difference for me starting X via an xdm vs a tty, and as a bonus there is less complexity and _less_ for me to setup... so why would I bother installing one to gain nothing. That doesn't mean I would force everyone to learn how to use a cli and assume this method is appropriate for everyone.
> in a world where Windows and MacOS (and I guess to a certain extent various linux flavors) exist and "just work",
Lol, I've seen how reliably Windows "works"; I'll stick with Linux, thanks. At least FOSS OS always let me find a fix or work around. Granted, I mostly see it these days when relatives ask for help so the sample is biased, but that seems fair considering the conversation here.
That's nice, I've had Nvidia based laptops and Linux and any time the kernel was updated there was a good chance I would be dropped to text mode and have to fix things from lynx, or links2.
Same, but I would say I only had these problems because I'm using arch and living in the bleeding edge. On the boxes I'm using a stabler distro (Ubuntu, PopOS, Mint) never had this problem.
It is by choice though, if you want everything updated to their latest releases you need to live with some breaking changes here and there
Some people seem to prefer systems that break often for some reason.
Had a roommate that ran arch (and wouldn’t shut up about it of course) —- he would update the system very often and very often it wouldn’t boot for some reason. One time he had to update a system that hadn’t been updated in a while and he opted for just reinstalling it.
It doesn’t really make sense to me, but I guess some people like it that way?
Please don't quantise all Linux users with something that's not gnome|kde or mainstream into "likes stuff that breaks" - both the author and I run Debian, this is the least breaky distro of all time, less than ubuntu.
Linux is literally about user choice, everything but the kernel is up for grabs, and even the kernel if that's what you want.
One also shouldn't form an impression of arch (or any other distro) from the experience of one user. I've had this arch install for over 10 years and don't remember having any issues like that; while hearing plenty of people having issues doing major version updates on more "stable" distros.
Arch specifically attracts people who want to learn how things are put together and mess with their system, which are also the kind of people most likely to break things.
Very well; since you've linked a site claiming that the Linux kernel (an open source kernel used in everything from embedded routers to supercomputers, from Android to Debian) isn't "about" choice, we can rephrase.
I've grown fond of just logging in via the tty and invoking startx... it's always there, even when your graphics drivers fail. I tried messing with xdms a long time ago when transitioning to i3wm, but it was just extra configuration, noise and inconsistency to sort out, without really gain anything useful for what is a single person machine. Simple is good.