Picking Nits.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jdixon Jun 08, 2008 6:42 PM EDT |
> Initially I had to mount removable media in a terminal session at the command line. To have HAL correctly add and remove icons on my Xfce desktop I had to create the .hal-mtab file in /media. It wasn't done automatically as is the case in most distributions. That's bizarre. It works fine on my machine. I have no idea why you would be having that problem. Is the user in the appropriate groups (I believe plugdev is the most important one)? > Also, if you decide to change your default system X session you need to change the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc symlink to point to the correct one for your chosen window manager or desktop environment of choice. Running xwmconfig should do this for you. > Slackware does not include a display manager which allows you to choose your session at login. I don't believe this is true. I'm pretty sure kdm offers that feature, and it's included by default if you install KDE. If you set you machine to runlevel 4 kdm is used by default as your login manager. > Slackware 12.1 is the first release to include HAL support. I believe you'll find 12.0 also included HAL support, though 12.1 improves matters considerably. > Even advanced users will find Slackware time consuming to install and configure properly. I don't find that to be true, but then again, I have no idea exactly what you consider "time consuming". Otherwise a well written (as usual) and largely fair review. |
| gus3 Jun 08, 2008 8:25 PM EDT |
jdixon: In fairness, I must say I had to "touch /media/.hal-mtab" as well. Then once I did that, suddenly my removable media started to mount under /media, which has presented no end of confusion to me. I practically cut my teeth on removable media under /mnt instead. |
| caitlyn Jun 09, 2008 6:51 AM EDT |
@jdixon: Yes, user groups were correct. Again, on most distros HAL needs no configuration and just works. I didn't run Slackware 12 (I did run 11) and the official release announcement by Patrick does claim that 12.1 is the first release with HAL support. That's my source of information there. If you install kde but choose to install xdm (the only display manager I saw offered at install time) you get xdm by default. I just checked my system and kdm is there but not enabled. I should correct this but it doesn't make things easier for the average user. kdm is a separate package on most distros which is probably why I assumed it wasn't there when I got xdm as my dm. "Time consuming" means it takes me days to get everything I want installed and configured properly as opposed to hours or minutes on other distros. Thank you for your assessment that it was a fair review. @gus3: I think all of us who have been running Linux for any length of time got used to /mnt. It could be worse. Vector Linux uses both -- /media for HAL and /mnt for VL-Hot. |
| caitlyn Jun 09, 2008 7:05 AM EDT |
@jdixon: I've made appropriate corrections to the review on O'Reilly News. I don't have the ability to do the same on lxer.com. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jun 09, 2008 7:17 AM EDT |
Caitlyn, please let me know what changes you would like and I will take care of it for you gladly. Anytime you ever need changes made to a posting, feel free to let me know. |
| jdixon Jun 09, 2008 8:02 AM EDT |
> "Time consuming" means it takes me days to get everything I want installed and configured properly as opposed to hours or minutes on other distros. OK. It only takes me a few hours, so I don't find it time consuming by your definition. I just recently completed a clean install of 12.1 and restoring all of my settings from12.0. It tool less than 6 hours from start to finish. I'm outvoted 2 to 1 on the .hal-mtab issue, so I'll assume I was just lucky. Strangely enough, the HAL auto-mount feature never worked properly for me in 12.0, but works fine with 12.1. And yes, I find the use of media instead od mnt confusing too. |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 09, 2008 9:18 AM EDT |
> I find the use of media instead od mnt confusing too. Glad to know I'm not the only one. This is what I thought /mnt was _for_. |
| tuxchick Jun 09, 2008 9:23 AM EDT |
As I understand it, someone somewhere decreed that /mnt is now for "permanent" devices like hard drive partitions and NFS mounts, and /media is for things that you plug in and remove. Though the USB subsystem treats everything like it's a smelly transient, so /etc/udev is full of complex rules to give "permanent" devices persistent names, and it seems that the major distributions dump everything into /media now, and it's all so complex there is no such thing as simple tweaks anymore. |
| techiem2 Jun 10, 2008 11:29 AM EDT |
That's kind of the idea I get too TC. Of course, then you toss autofs into the mix..... lol |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 10, 2008 11:59 AM EDT |
Speaking of persistant names, I've got udev incrementing the built-in ethernet port number every time my Mom boots her laptop. I don't know exactly when it started, but today she's got a boot message of "udev: renaming eth0 to eth131" |
| techiem2 Jun 10, 2008 12:23 PM EDT |
Odd. I see that happen when plugging new interfaces in, but not with the internal one. The rules are written to the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules files (at least on my gentoo installs). Can be useful but can also be a major pain (I've had to go in and nuke some/all of them several times on various machines). |
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