Please revert Xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

[Patrick O'Donnell]

>Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:42:30 -0400
>From: Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net>
>
>...In over thirty years of working with *nix systems, never once has
>a user complained that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace has caused them any
>problems. ...

Here's a complaint: in over thirty years of working with systems of a
large variety of types, system-level tools usurping useful
single-gesture affordances (C-A-BS among them) for relatively rare
uses has caused me problems everywhere.

>This change is just wrong. It cannot be justified.

Obviously it can.  I will agree that the fact that it also has serious
negative impact on sysadmins in situations as yours should be taken
into consideration.  But, just because /you/ and /your/ users don't
need C-A-BS for user programs doesn't mean there's /no/ justification.

>And if it was a true problem you would find references to it.

Uh.  Right.....

>Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:06:24 -0400
>From: Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net>
>
>And this Ctrl-Alt-Backspace historical keystroke combination has been
>around forever.

Uh, you might want to avoid appealing to historical precedence.
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace has been used in Emacs and other tools /far/ longer
than X has been around.  It predates graphical displays.

I'd avoid appealing to frequency of use, as well.  I'd estimate that
those who use the tools that make use of Ctrl-Alt-Backspace use that
gesture far more, small though the community might be, than anyone
uses it for crashing X.  And if that isn't the case, what does that
say about X?