ctrl-alt-backspace

Harka Gyozo carlos at gamma.ttk.pte.hu
Sun Jun 14 06:10:46 PDT 2009


I just want to make a +1 to those ctrl-alt-backspace lovers...

By the way subscription and confirmation page on the list gave me an error
page.. is it maybe a new feature?

I think disabling alt control backspace by default was a very bad idea.

I found myself in front of it when I was supporting a user by phone. I said
him to use the above combination, and that was not working! We reinstalled the
rest of his operating system.... backed up datas, and so on.. so there is an
accident caused by the DISABLING of control-alt-backspace. I want to report it..
Otherwise in my debian the default xkb config disables the zap, and the
default X behavior disables it too... so I have to enable it at two place...
There are many windowmanagers, desktop environments out there.. I will never
be sure again how to restart X on virtually any Linux by phone... Maybe the
user can switch to vt-s, but have to login, and kill something, or as root
restart the oops, xdm? kdm? gdm? and many distroes not allowing to login as
root directly, so he should use sudo. But in debian sudo is not configured by
default... so I will pass the X problems to our Microsoft team, to tell him
restart his PC. Another good step to make a better windows from *nix.. not
what I really want..

I was also surprised about the black initialising background. If a DE or a WM
not starting I cannot say about a blank screen if it is a cable problem, or an
X related problem, or X working properly ( the old background was the evidence
for that ... ).

Okay, I will use the "-retro", but what about our users? I won't be able to
help them.. just like in windows good breakpoints gone, if something is not
working X server will act like a black box for remote untrained users.

HARKA Győző 
Linux sysadmin, also helpdesk backline
University of Pécs
Faculty of Science
Linux Consulting Centre


More information about the xorg-devel mailing list