11:12 p.m.
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.)
--
Dave Close, Compata, Irvine CA +1 714 434 7359
dave(a)compata.com dhclose(a)alumni.caltech.edu
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't
mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles
11:47 p.m.
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
12:06 a.m.
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).
--
Dave Close, Compata, Irvine CA "There is no security on this earth.
dave(a)compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 There is only opportunity."
dhclose(a)alumni.caltech.edu -- Douglas MacArthur
12:03 a.m.
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.
--
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12:09 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:04 AM Tim via users
<users(a)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
12:33 a.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
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.)
--
Dave Close, Compata, Irvine CA +1 714 434 7359
dave(a)compata.com dhclose(a)alumni.caltech.edu
"I am patient with stupidity but not with those
who are proud of it." -- Edith Sitwell
5:52 a.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
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
7:43 a.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
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.
--
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8:39 a.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 2:34 AM Dave Close <dave(a)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.
--
George N. White III
10:18 a.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
On 2023-09-25 09:39, George N. White III wrote:
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 2:34 AM Dave Close <dave(a)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>
8 p.m.
New subject: multi-user vs graphical mode (was startx equivalent for Wayland)
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.
--
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8:45 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:13 AM Dave Close <dave(a)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
9:03 a.m.
George,
On 2023-09-26 23:45, George N. White III wrote:
On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 1:13 AM Dave Close <dave(a)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.
--
Philip Rhoades
PO Box 896
Cowra NSW 2794
Australia
E-mail: phil(a)pricom.com.au
265
days inactive
266
days old
13 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
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Dave Close -
George N. White III -
Jeffrey Walton -
Joe Zeff -
John Mellor -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Philip Rhoades -
Samuel Sieb -
Tim