I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
(The target is a system running 64-bit F38 fully updated.)
On 9/24/23 21:12, Dave Close wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
You need to start the desktop you want to run. e.g. gnome-shell
I asked:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
Samuel Sieb wrote:
You need to start the desktop you want to run. e.g. gnome-shell
Thanks. So there is no equivalent of /etc/sysconfig/desktop?
Personally, I prefer KDE. I can eliminate most of the "icons" and similar junk and just manage using things I can read (though it does take some effort to disable that stuff).
On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 21:12 -0700, Dave Close wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
I don't really see the advantage in not starting a desktop session, just to log in, then starting one afterwards. There must be something I'm missing.
Speaking as someone who grew up using computers before we had GUIs, I now view *having* to use a CLI to do things is like having to use mechanical teletype (and yes, I have). Yes, there are use cases, I do use the CLI from time to time, but I find them emergency cases, not normal operations. It's cumbersome, and next to useless when you need to look at, or enter, some data that isn't plain text. Or do something with any program that doesn't have a command line interface.
My approach is usually to let the computer boot up in the normal way it was intended for use (graphical), and leave it running 24/7. If I do need a completely command line interface to fix something, I just CTRL+ALT+F2 and use one of the other virtual consoles.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
(The target is a system running 64-bit F38 fully updated.)
You might say what desktop environment you're going to be using, too, because *it* is probably going to be the thing that starts Wayland, and the command sequence is probably desktop-specific.
My brief research into this, just now, suggests that Gnome and KDE each have their own way of doing it. And the first lot of results are all ancient info. Such as a "startw" command instead of "startx."
And my interpretation isn't that Wayland is an X alternative, it's a completely different thing in what it does and how it works (hence why various things just don't work with it). So, it's not like starting a basic X session then running a desktop on top of that as well.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:04 AM Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 21:12 -0700, Dave Close wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
I don't really see the advantage in not starting a desktop session, just to log in, then starting one afterwards. There must be something I'm missing.
I think the general problem is, some desktop managers try to be a Security Manager when they should not be. For example, LightDM provides a guest account that is enabled by default; but not an account in the system (no passwd file entry). Folks can login using it in a kiosk-like mode.
I don't know if that applies here, though.
Jeff
I wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
Tim via users wrote:
I don't really see the advantage in not starting a desktop session, just to log in, then starting one afterwards. There must be something I'm missing.
If you want to change the subject, you should change the subject line.
The principal advantage is that I get to see what the system is doing during boot and login. I strongly dislike any interface that tries to make things "simple" by hiding what it does. I don't trust things that are hidden from view.
And I've probably used computers longer than most of us, having started with an IBM 7094 and an 029 keypunch. There are certainly good use cases for a graphic application, especially for things I don't do often and don't remember the tricks. But every graphic system has its own ways whereas the command line uses only things on a standard keyboard. Most of us know the words, "file", and, "save", but when was the last time anyone here used a manila folder or a floppy disk? (Don't tell me about "hover" to discover the meaning of some silly picture. That's just extra work, and tedious besides when searching through dozens of pictures for the one needed.)
On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 22:33 -0700, Dave Close wrote:
The principal advantage is that I get to see what the system is doing during boot and login. I strongly dislike any interface that tries to make things "simple" by hiding what it does. I don't trust things that are hidden from view.
AFAIK you can do that by hitting ESC. And of course the journal records everything in excruciating detail if you need it.
poc
On Sun, 2023-09-24 at 22:33 -0700, Dave Close wrote:
The principal advantage is that I get to see what the system is doing during boot and login. I strongly dislike any interface that tries to make things "simple" by hiding what it does. I don't trust things that are hidden from view.
I detest that, too. But I just remove "rhgb" from the kernel line, letting it always boot showing me what it's up to. And sometimes remove "quiet," if I needed to diagnose a problem. Hitting escape, or some other key, doesn't help if the system is ignoring the keyboard.
It's annoying staring at the screen wondering is it doing something, is it stuck, what's it waiting for? Diagnosing a Mac that stalled halfway through booting was a right pain.
Most of us know the words, "file", and, "save", but when was the last time anyone here used a manila folder or a floppy disk? (Don't tell me about "hover" to discover the meaning of some silly picture. That's just extra work, and tedious besides when searching through dozens of pictures for the one needed.)
I agree that most icons aren't very practical, and I don't like the hover and wait on this, then hover and wait more on the next non- obvious icon. GUIs are supposed to be quicker, not more tedious! Some are like trying to read hieroglyphics. I think most of us get used to clicking on the third icon for this, and the last one for that. Thankfully most menus use words.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 2:34 AM Dave Close dave@compata.com wrote:
I wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
Have you tried https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME#Wayland_sessions:
if [[ -z $DISPLAY && $(tty) == /dev/tty1 && $XDG_SESSION_TYPE == tty ]]; then MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland exec dbus-run-session gnome-session fi
The article has note that *"The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed."*
Tim via users wrote:
I don't really see the advantage in not starting a desktop session, just to log in, then starting one afterwards. There must be something I'm missing.
[...] The principal advantage is that I get to see what the system is doing during boot and login. I strongly dislike any interface that tries to make things "simple" by hiding what it does. I don't trust things that are hidden from view.
I always remove the "rhbg quiet", journactl is a big improvement over trying to figure out which log file is relevant to a problem.
And I've probably used computers longer than most of us, having started with an IBM 7094 and an 029 keypunch.
As an undergraduate in 1968 I had access to < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Time_Sharing_System%3E using a teletype terminal and saving programs on paper tape. It wasn't until grad school in 1972 that I met a keypunch.
There are certainly good use cases for a graphic application, especially for things I don't do often and don't remember the tricks. But every graphic system has its own ways whereas the command line uses only things on a standard keyboard.[...]
These days, many linux users never use the command-line until something breaks and the smartphone images they post cut off key parts of error messages.
Linux is community driven. The community now includes kids whose first experience was a smartphone. I used to run "practical" sessions for a workshop where a linux application was the only implementation of the theory being taught. We found is necessary to spend the first two afternoons introducing the command-line so later sessions weren't dominated by problems with linux.
The community benefits when experienced users regularly use the most common configuration (e.g., Fedora Workstation with Wayland) so they can identify issues and pitfalls as well as encouraging new users to learn POSIX shell commands in a terminal.
On 2023-09-25 09:39, George N. White III wrote:
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 2:34 AM Dave Close dave@compata.com wrote:
I wrote: > I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode > (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the > startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a > Wayland session.
Have you tried https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME#Wayland_sessions: if [[ -z $DISPLAY && $(tty) == /dev/tty1 && $XDG_SESSION_TYPE == tty ]]; then MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland exec dbus-run-session gnome-session fi
The article has note that *"The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed."*
Tim via users wrote: >I don't really see the advantage in not starting a desktop session, >just to log in, then starting one afterwards. There must be something >I'm missing. [...] The principal advantage is that I get to see what the system is doing during boot and login. I strongly dislike any interface that tries to make things "simple" by hiding what it does. I don't trust things that are hidden from view.
I always remove the "rhbg quiet", journactl is a big improvement over trying to figure out which log file is relevant to a problem.
And I've probably used computers longer than most of us, having started with an IBM 7094 and an 029 keypunch.
As an undergraduate in 1968 I had access to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Time_Sharing_System using a teletype terminal and saving programs on paper tape. It wasn't until grad school in 1972 that I met a keypunch.
There are certainly good use cases for a graphic application, especially for things I don't do often and don't remember the tricks. But every graphic system has its own ways whereas the command line uses only things on a standard keyboard.[...]
These days, many linux users never use the command-line until something breaks and the smartphone images they post cut off key parts of error messages.
Linux is community driven. The community now includes kids whose first experience was a smartphone. I used to run "practical" sessions for a workshop where a linux application was the only implementation of the theory being taught. We found is necessary to spend the first two afternoons introducing the command-line so later sessions weren't dominated by problems with linux.
The community benefits when experienced users regularly use the most common configuration (e.g., Fedora Workstation with Wayland) so they can identify issues and pitfalls as well as encouraging new users to learn POSIX shell commands in a terminal.
I agree and disagree with your position, but for different reasoning.
When possible, I like to use a graphical environment. Its simpler and faster for most everyday things.
However, I strongly dislike the make-it-look-like Windows thinking that goes on at RedHat and by association, Fedora Workstation. For example, the "rhgb quiet" boot defaults make it hard to actually see what is going wrong when you have a hardware issue, a misconfigured app or service, or a bad update. When you have something that only fails once in a while like a race condition issue, the boot messages should be in your face, not hidden behind a stupid spinner screen that then locks up. The Gnome software app needs a complete rewrite, and I far prefer the faster and more accurate feedback from the CLI dnf command. Maybe the GUI is fine for installing common apps, but for example, there is no entry for the thunderbird-wayland package that is required to run Thunderbird in F38. If you have a Gnome desktop or app fault, it is extraordinarily difficult to debug, most often requiring a special debug version to be installed to even give you basic logs. If you need to see things like disk i/o performance, the system monitor app does not give you that information, and you have to go to the CLI with applications like top and iostat.
I'm also perplexed that Fedora server uses weird things like a different filesystem than Workstation. That's just wrong. Btrfs is as good as zfs, and a considerable improvement of xfs and ext4. I've had nightmares trying to patch an xfs filesystem because after 50 years of development, it is still not stable. Btrfs is at least as fast at both read and write, and does a far better job handling bitrot on modern disk sizes. Xfs cannot do that, and probably never will. The toolset is also richer, making things like backup easier, faster and more reliable. Using xfs as the default fs is an obvious deferment to its RHEL cousin where questionable reasoning ends up in bad decisions, and holding back an excellent filesystem like the superior btrfs fs for unclear reasons. This very questionable decision is also the underlying reason why an ext2 partition and grub have to live on, instead of booting from a single btrfs partition and making disk management so much easier. Complexity in a server implementation is bad IMHO.
While I am a strong supporter of Fedora, I appreciate the more correct thinking behind the information feedback given in Debian and some of its derivatives like Ubuntu. When something goes wrong on those distros, it is far easier to recognize and correct than in Fedora or RHEL. IMHO, Fedora needs to adopt much of the Debian thinking and stop making a Windows clone. People who move to Linux are not interested in making it work like Windows, but instead want something better. Fulfil that promise instead of hamstringing them. Bad decision making is one of the reasons why IBM (who own RedHat and many of the Fedora devs work there) is mostly irrelevent today.
<rant mode=off>
On Mon, 2023-09-25 at 11:18 -0400, John Mellor wrote:
I strongly dislike the make-it-look-like Windows thinking that goes on
I right with you on that.
I escaped a few years of Windows hell to Linux, because I wanted something better. I get the impression some people just choose it because they want something free, and then want it to be the same.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:13 AM Dave Close dave@compata.com wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
(The target is a system running 64-bit F38 fully updated.)
Yesterday I tried started a session using:
if [[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_SESSION_TYPE == tty ]]; then MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland exec dbus-run-session gnome-session fi
This has been working since yesterday, but today with bright sun I discovered that the brightness setting isn't available. Fortunately this was a problem with some Fedora update and I have a script that uses ddcutil to adjust brightness, but nw wonder what other differences may turn up.
-- George N. White III
George,
On 2023-09-26 23:45, George N. White III wrote:
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:13 AM Dave Close dave@compata.com wrote:
I detest a graphical login and insist on running in multi-user mode (old runlevel 3). To start an X11 session after login, I can use the startx command. But I haven't found an equivalent command to start a Wayland session.
An old post on this list suggests using weston-launch. But dnf says there is no package that includes such a command and I can't find any other weston command that looks likely. Surely I can't be the only one wanting to start from a command line?
(The target is a system running 64-bit F38 fully updated.)
Yesterday I tried started a session using:
if [[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_SESSION_TYPE == tty ]]; then MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland exec dbus-run-session gnome-session fi
This has been working since yesterday, but today with bright sun I discovered that the brightness setting isn't available. Fortunately this was a problem with some Fedora update and I have a script that uses ddcutil to adjust brightness, but nw wonder what other differences may turn up.
I am a bit confused about all this discussion - I routinely boot to multi-user mode and if I need a graphical environment I run this command:
sway
- doesn't that do what you want to do?
P.