Re: [dev] GPL free Linux

From: Markus Wichmann <nullplan_AT_gmx.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2018 17:20:03 +0100

On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 11:17:49AM +0000, Alessandro Pistocchi wrote:
> On 12 Nov 2018, at 05:28, Markus Wichmann <nullplan_AT_gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > That's why you have an iPhone?
>
> You would be surprised. I still use an old phone with the numeric keys
> as a mobile phone.
>

Those are great: If you get mugged, you can try dialling 911 in your
pocket. Try doing that with touch screen buttons.

>
> I would use some help to make it work with X ( does it work with
> Wayland? ). There are not many docs I found about it...
>

Ah, that old chestnut. As far as I know, the X input driver "evdev"
depends on the paths of the event devices being in /dev/input, and on
you having read access to them. I don't know if smdev puts them there by
default, nor how it sets the permissions on those files. Also, there's a
dependency on libudev in there somewhere. I don't know if that can pick
up files from smdev.

The files should be named according to the links in /sys/class/input.
You should also be able to see the error messages in X11's log file.
That should tell you what's wrong. And if all else fails: strace.

I have no experience with Wayland but I suppose it requires a similar
setup. Not having read permission on a device file is a showstopper no
matter the codebase.

> > Well, that means all of nothing. Walking can be a credible
> > alternative to driving in some circumstances, but not if the
> > distance is 400km. What do you want out of a desktop machine?
>
> I want to have a windowing system, compilers and libraries mainly.
> Also I need make and I would like to have flex and bison. Maybe a web
> browser and a graphical IDE for source code editing but I am not even
> sure about that.
>

I was going to ask "Why not just use sta.li?" but that project
apparently doesn't exist anymore.

And that is pretty much exactly what I want from a distribution as well,
and I just use Debian (you know you can just remove systemd from Debian,
right?)

> >
> > Also, are you aware that creating and maintaining a Linux distribution
> > is a whole lot of work? The city of Munich recently discovered this, and
> > that's why they are switching back to Windows. That, and corruption of
> > course; this is public admin we're talking about.
>
> Yes if you want a lot of functionality to manage a city.
> Doing what I am trying to do is way way simpler and could never be
> used by the city of Munich without a lot of additional work.
>

I was mostly referring to the need to keep your software up-to-date, if
for no other reason then to benefit from security patches. This appears
to have been the biggest failing of the two lads who lead the project.
See, with Debian, an army of maintainers does all the work for me, and I
just need to "apt-get upgrade" once in a while. And then delete systemd
again.

>
> Ok sorry, wrong example.
>
> Like I said above, I want a windowing system, compilers, libraries,
> and IDE and a library to make desktop apps as easily as possible. I
> want to be able to make and play games and to experiment with coding.
>

Please, do tell if you find such a library. The ones I found were either
the wrong language (Tk, Qt, FLTK), or hopelessly obtuse (gtk). Or pretty
much no assistance at all (xaw, motif).

Ciao,
Markus
Received on Mon Nov 12 2018 - 17:20:03 CET