desktop b0rken: was Re: X not working on precise

[Avi Greenbury]

Dave Howorth wrote:
> Avi Greenbury wrote:
> > Dave Howorth wrote:
> >> Another thing the upgrade has broken is the desktop. I was using lxdm
> >> and lxde.
> > 
> > Was this installed by installing the lubuntu-desktop package, or did
> > you install the components individually?
> 
> IIRC, I just installed lxde. In any event, I don't have any lubuntu
> packages installed.

A lubuntu-desktop install will be more robust than just lxde, but
it'll also pull more in. The *-desktop packages are supposed to
provide an entire desktop so there'll be a mail client and web browser
and suchlike, which might or might not be different to what's already
there. There's no reason you *shouldn't* have a system as you do, but
the more 'normal' a setup is the more testing and fixing it gets :)

> I thought it might be ;(   I wasn't using it and this is an upgrade not
> a fresh install, so I'd rather people didn't interfere with choices I've
> already made!

Try to think of this as incompetence rather than malice. The upgrade
simply didn't notice your preference and so assumed the default, I'd
imagine. I've upgraded a few neither-Gnome-nor-Unity machines with no
effects like this, but they were all using a *-desktop package for the
alternatives.
 
> Ah, OK. It's too late now because I've switched back to lxdm. That's
> poor user interface design because I spent a while mousing over the
> screen examining all the options on the menu bar, looking for context
> menus etc. A drop-down menu should look like a drop-down menu if people
> are to find it!

Yeah, I agree. I think part of the plan was to avoid making it look
like there were too many things that had to be chosen before the user
could log in. It's also one of those things that becomes obvious once
you know it...
 
> Yes, I did that. It didn't change the display manager after a logout but
> it has now I've rebooted. Why couldn't it just restart the display
> manager when it got the chance? It shouldn't be necessary to shut down a
> whole machine to change a display manager.

It's not. It's necessary to restart the display manager to do it
(well, to stop the current one and start the new default one), and
that's something that, personally, I'd very much rather not happen
without my explicit say-so. The display manager doesn't restart on
logout because normally there's no need to, and sometimes (like when
someone else is logged in) there's a good reason to not.

-- 
Avi