Re: [gentoo-user] Re: xorg-server mouse and keyboard woes

["Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:46 PM, Keith Dart<keith@dartworks.biz> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:53:22 -0700
> "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is NOT the way for Linux to make progress in the desktop wars,
>> folks.
>
> Works for me. ;-)
>
> But its true that Xorg is making some rapid progress. There's some
> growing pains.  If you are running Gentoo unstable mask (~<X>) then
> you are on the "bleeding edge" of open source development. Therefore
> occasional breakage is to be expected. File a bug, make it better.
>
> If you want stable, then use Ubuntu LTS release, or CentOS. Stable, but
> boring. ;-)


Thanks for the sermon, pastor.  I guess.

Why did you jump to the conclusion that I am running unstable? I'm
not.  I never have, though I occasionally (like twice in the 7 years
I've been using gentoo) marked a particular package for unstable.  So
by elimination, the term for what I have should be "stable".  Why then
try to exile me to a distro I don't want?

I do, however, pretty much need "working".  A black screen, dead input
devices, and impossibly esoteric config files just don't cut it.  (The
HAL learning curve is a danger in itself, and is just not worth it to
me.  I don't expect to touch it for years, which means that when it
eventually gets broken I'll have forgotten it completely and have no
idea how to proceed safely).

I got a solution by disabling HAL in gentoo.  And for my broken ubuntu
systems, I did indeed go back to LTS, but not so much because of the
LT, it's just that 8.04 is the last one that worked.  That's the
upside of a binary distro -- my November backup was good enough (i.e.
it worked), and an overnight update brought everything up to speed and
up to snuff. The things that change a lot are all in /home, which was
not affected.

Hopefully, I can now get on with my summer projects.  I'm done with
HAL and X.  Until next time.

++ kevin

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD