Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Dmitri Pogosyan]

I was never fond of split ebuilds, because I found you end up installing
almost everything anyway but managing them becomes much more cumbersome.
Bad example is X - I do not have qualification anyway to decide that I need
this library but not that one, and it seems that every single library comes in
it own ebuild, so you start to wonder why not compile each C program individually.

Saying that, I found KDE 3.5.10 split extremely well thought through and
really useful. It is organzied in well defined (and not too numerous) meta
blocks which contain pieces of service packages (like kioslaves) that are
relevant to this block, kdebase-meta is fully functional minimalist
installation, and extra apps that you may need are very intuitive to find.

So kudos to developers on that. 

> Good input.
> 
> QUESTION: I've been somewhat unhappy over the last year with Gentoo
> package maintainers doing little updates to gnome files which seems to
> drive more and more little updates. Granted, I could mask things,
> etc., but I've found it frustrating. I've worried with KDE that it's
> so big I'll find myself updating files pretty much all the time. Is
> this warranted or just me worrying?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark



--
Dmitri Pogosyan            Department of Physics
Associate Professor        University of Alberta
tel 1-780-492-2150         11322 - 89 Avenue
fax 1-780-492-0714         Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G7, CANADA

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

"Dmitri Pogosyan" <pogosyan@phys.ualberta.ca> posted
200906171636.n5HGaRp03314@webmail.phys.ualberta.ca, excerpted below, on 
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:36:27 -0600:

> I was never fond of split ebuilds, because I found you end up installing
> almost everything anyway but managing them becomes much more cumbersome.
> Bad example is X - I do not have qualification anyway to decide that I
> need this library but not that one, and it seems that every single
> library comes in it own ebuild, so you start to wonder why not compile
> each C program individually.

FWIW, with X, you should no longer need the xorg-x11 meta-package, and 
without it, pretty much everything you need is now a dependency either of 
xorg-server or of the various other X packages you may install that need 
it.  Among other things, eliminating the xorg-x11 metapackage will likely 
allow depclean to uninstall quite a number of unnecessary (for most 
people, they help with exotic fonts for Uzbekistan, etc.) font packages 
and the like, some of which are unfree, something at least some of us are 
concerned about.

Then you don't have to worry about X any more, as only what you need is 
pulled in as dependencies of whatever.  Unless of course you want some 
exotic font or something.  Then you just emerge that to get it added to 
world on its own, and don't worry about it any more, either.

So it basically ends up much as you were saying KDE does (and I agree).  
Just as kdebase-meta pulls in the basics there, xorg-server (well, once 
you set the INPUT_DEVICES and VIDEO_CARDS variables as appropriate) pulls 
in the basics for X.

But just as with KDE, it wasn't always that way.  It took them several 
version generations worth of practice to get all the metas and 
dependencies setup correctly.  Before that, you'd often have trouble with 
missing dependencies unless you merged the overall meta-package (kde-meta 
or xorg-x11), because the dependencies weren't all worked out properly 
yet and individual packages were often missing one or more of them.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Steve Herber]

I have searched the web and failed.  I hate to bother the group but I know
the answer is here.  Thanks in advance.

My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right helper 
applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most helper 
applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But during the
past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have lost the ability
to get the right application chosen for the different mime types.  It 
seems that over time the Linux desktop environment is getting more 
complicated than a Windows computer and it seems like a sad state to me.
Either that, or I am missing some simple piece of information.

I have two desktops, both amd64.  One wants to run gimp for each PDF
while the other runs adobe.  I would like to change them both to use
xpdf or at least change the one from Gimp to adobe.

If anyone can give me a few pointers, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Herber	herber@thing.com		work: 206-221-7262
Software Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services	home: 425-454-2399

Re: [gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Dominic Reich]

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Steve Herber wrote:
> My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right helper 
> applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most helper 
> applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But during the
> past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have lost the ability
> to get the right application chosen for the different mime types.  It 
> seems that over time the Linux desktop environment is getting more 
> complicated than a Windows computer and it seems like a sad state to me.
> Either that, or I am missing some simple piece of information.

Isn't it just in Firefox' options dialogue, the tab Applications (fourth
from the left). You can choose the program or tell firefox to ask every
time which app you want to use.
I can't look into it because I'm using windows here, but must be the
same in linux IMO.

Greets, Dominic


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Tom]

> I have searched the web and failed.  I hate to bother the group but I
> know the answer is here.  Thanks in advance.
> 
> My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right
> helper applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most
> helper applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But
> during the past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have
> lost the ability to get the right application chosen for the
> different mime types.  It seems that over time the Linux desktop
> environment is getting more complicated than a Windows computer and
> it seems like a sad state to me. Either that, or I am missing some
> simple piece of information.
> 
> I have two desktops, both amd64.  One wants to run gimp for each PDF
> while the other runs adobe.  I would like to change them both to use
> xpdf or at least change the one from Gimp to adobe.
> 
> If anyone can give me a few pointers, I would appreciate it.

Look here,bottom post:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85748