F11: xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>
>>
>> At no point have I ever seen any real discussion on any of the lists
>> about this it just happens. None of this changes have had any benefit
>> to me on any of the several systems I've used X on.
>>
>> In this case no one has pointed to an email archive of where this
>> discussion took place. The attitude is that its been decided by the
>> deciders -- so live with it. I do not understand where this kind of
>> hostility towards some long time users is coming from.
>
> You will have to look beyond yourself and ask whether it has been a
> improvement in general (creating Xorg configuration by poking hardware
> directly, bypassing the kernel is way more fragile than
> auto-configuration in majority of systems for example)

That's a simple question to ask myself. And the answer to that is no.
I've never head of this fictional users that have a significant
probability of having a different monitor connected to their computer
on every boot. Nor have I seen any significant number of users
accidentally depressing three keys at the same time. Why is it that
auto configuration can't be used to auto configure on setup, not every
time? Who benifits from not being restarting X with
Ctrl+Alt+Backspace?

The autoconfig alone in my experience causes more problems than it
solves -- having to explain to someone unfamiliar why is it their
desktop looks weird because they started the machine with the monitor
of.

> and then
> understand that much of the changes are just made in any free and open
> source software project by developers implementing those changes. In the
> case of major software like the Linux kernel and Xorg, these changes are
> in majority made by vendors to meet customer requirements

I can understand all that. It fine if I don't count as a customer. I
have previously asked for the rationale behind this latest change, or
a link to where this was discussed so that I can understand it myself.

> (which I would
> count as meeting user needs even though this is no democracy) and these
> changes are made upstream for the most part. I don't see hostility in
> any of this.

The hostility is in making significant changes to behaviors people
have come to depend on and not letting them no about it till later on.
Not hostile would have been an email to one of the many list altering
us users of this upcoming change. Not hostile would be explaining the
rationale instead of just saying that the change has been already,
take it up with someone else. In no way are the release notes the best
place to alert users of these kind of significant changes. This isn't
a new feature, or some bug.

-- 
Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin
( www.pembo13.com )