F11: xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

[Ralf Corsepius]

Christopher Stone wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Tom Lane <tgl at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> writes:
>>> c-a-bs to me is an "ejection seat button"
>>> => disabling it is not helpful
> 
> It's like an ejection seat button without a label. ;-)
Well, IMO, it's obscured enough, such that educated users find it when 
they feel they need it and new-comers not hit it accidentally.

And if they hit it accidentially, it will surprise them only once or 
twice, hardly causing any damage and push them through a learning curve, 
helping them to understand that X11 is not Windows.


> I was just thinking it would be cool if c-a-bs would send you to a
> virtual console and open up a text confirmation dialog box.  Dunno if
> something like that is possible though.
As I previously wrote, to me such proposals are in the same class as: 
"Do you really want to eject? Enter root password to eject, confirm 
ejection ... ejection will be started in 60 secs ..."

It voids "c-a-bs" as a means of "emergency button". They are meant to 
prevent _further_ damage in situations of emergencies and aren't 
necessarily guaranteed to "not cause damage".

I mean, when pressing "c-a-bs", I am expecting the Xserver to terminate 
immediately and do not expect those "open applications to save their state".

That said, "c-a-bs" to me is one of the last options to choose from when 
trying to rescue a system before having to resort to more brutal means: 
"c-alt-del", "soft power off", "hard power off" [1].

Ralf

[1] Classical situation: Something in X or below it (Xdriver/kernel) is 
hogging CPU/memory to an extend a system doesn't respond to interactive 
input anymore. And yes, these kind of situations do still happen.