desktop b0rken: was Re: X not working on precise

[Dave Howorth]

Avi Greenbury wrote:
> 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 :)

>From my POV I have it set up so it works (barring current upgrade
tribulations) and if I pull in lubuntu-desktop there's no upside and all
it can do is break something. It seems that firefox is not its default
browser for example, so that could go wrong.

>> 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.

You're quite right. I shouldn't have assumed there is a guilty party.

>> 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...

I guess if I ever want to try Unity, I'll now know where to find it :)

> 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.

Understood. I guess it could be automated - the DM knows when it has no
active sessions and could be told to restart when that next occurred -
but I can quite see that could easily be a step too far. Which throws
the problem back at the documentation, so poor punters like me would
know what needed to be done ... I see lightdm documentation is already
an entertaining subject.