Follow up on copy/highlight, lightdm, and DE conversions.

[Jonathan Marsden]

On 04/30/2012 05:00 AM, Lance wrote:

> Please forgive the top post, I honestly do plan on trying to find a
> better way of doing things. Possibly using Abiword and copy-n-pasting
> messages .............. just be patient ;^)


No problem.  Do what it takes to participate; optimization is a lower
priority :)

I think your choice of free email provider may be part of the issue for
you -- Yahoo does not offer access to its free email accounts using a
standard email protocol (such as POP3 or IMAP4), only a web UI which is
designed for casual one to one email use only.

If you could find an email provider that offers you either POP3 or IMAP4
email, you could then use a "normal" free email program such as Sylpheed
or Thunderbird, and these *do* help make correct quoting easier.

> About copying and/or highlighting please give me a bit of time to 
> follow up on that. Your hints have been very helpful, particularly 
> using the Tab key to advance to the next "box" in the live installer.
> Rather sensible since Tab is used so much in the text installer
> (either alternate image or the netboot mini.iso).


Glad to have been useful.  In case it helps: TAB also works in many
other GUI programs, including forms in web browsers.  Because I started
out in computers before mice were common, I tend to see them as an
"extra" to be used "when needed", and so stay with the keyboard more
than many newer users seem to.

> About the DE conversions this is so far very off topic because I've
> been focusing on converting Lubuntu and Xubuntu to Ubuntu because of >
the pae vs non-pae issue.

I'm confused.  I'm not at all sure why or how a choice of DE and pae are
related... one is a high level per-user choice, the other is a low level
kernel issue.  They should be totally independent of each other.  Am I
missing the point?

What is the set of use cases for doing these conversions -- in what
circumstances will what kinds of users feel a need to "convert" from one
Ubuntu flavour to another?

If you really do have a need to "convert" people (and their machines)
from one DE to another, much depends on how much work you feel a need to
do.  At minimum, you could just install and configure the relevant "new"
DE and DM, and then uninstall the other old one!  Then let the other
users of your machine (if there are any) figure out configuring the new
DE (and using a different set of default apps, if you change those too) :)

Beyond that, trying to convert anything that is highly DE-specific
(virtual desktop names and layouts, keyboard shortcuts, and themes and
so forth) could be rather hard work to automate... if you have a need to
convert a thousand Xubuntu users to Lubuntu at a major organization, and
many of them have complex DE customizations, it might be worth
attempting, I suppose.  That would be a fairly big project, though.

Then there is the issue of handling differing default applications.  Are
you doing automated email client conversions from Thunderbird to
Slypheed (or vice versa), retaining account configuration and saved
mail?  How do you handle converting the user's OpenOffice.org documents
to GNUmeric and Abiword formats?  You can make this kind of conversion
project as complex as you like, if you have requirements for that sort
of thing :)

> I do have some thoughts about lightdm documentation but I need time
> before I can focus on that. No more multi-tasking for me :^)


OK, sounds good to me.  Stay focused and stay healthy!

Jonathan