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xsnow not working in Etch KDE

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Lavene
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#31 Post by Lavene »

ComputerBob wrote:@ Tina,

What's the point of including a zillion popular packages in the default installation if you don't include the things that each of those popular packages need in order to actually work? How did those package ever get to be popular if each user has to individually figure out how to get some of them to work?
When it comes to this screensaver thing I agree with you. It's stupid to include the list but not the packages needed to run them. And I have no idea what so ever what's behind that somewhat bizarre idea.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like the equivalent of making a really cool, brand new car that everyone wants because it includes electric door, electric windows, electric seats, electric seat warmers, electric mirrors, electric cup holders, an electronic GPS system, an electronic security system and a super-duper electronic sound system...

....and then delivering that car with some fuses missing from its fuse box and expecting customers to figure out which fuses they need to find and where they need to install them in order to make everything work. :lol:
It reminds me of something that happened years ago when CD players still was kinda expensieve. I managed to break the remote and went to buy a new one. They had two models, one basic and one advanced. Not having a lot of money I went for the basic one.

When I got home I noticed that the basic one I had just bought looked exactly like the broken advanced less the buttons. Curious I opened them both and the PCBs was exactly the same. So I put the PCB from my basic model in the case of the advanced one and viola... I had an advanced remote. The only difference being that the basic mode lacked the actual buttons!
Maybe I'm missing something, but I just "don't get" how anyone could think that doing that would be a good idea, let alone consciously decide to do things that way.
You could try to file a bug report, severity 'wishlist', requesting that "xscreensaver-gl" is made into a dependency of 'xscreensaver'. It might just be as simple as the package screwing up systems not using OpenGL though...

Tina

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#32 Post by ComputerBob »

Thanks for clarifying! At least I I can take a little comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one who thinks that the whole screensaver situation is rather bizarre. And your story about the remote control seems especially appropriate to the topic at hand. :lol:

I get the imprssion that the fact that I installed Debian Etch from the Debian KDE CD, and do not have Gnome on my system at all, puts me in a pretty small minority of users -- users who have a few specific issues that Gnome and Gnome/KDE users don't deal with -- and maybe that's partly why there hasn't been a groundswell of interest to deal with the default screensavers issue in a way that makes sense. :wink:
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#33 Post by llivv »

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Last edited by llivv on 2019-02-17 02:03, edited 1 time in total.

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#34 Post by ComputerBob »

Yes, what you're sayihg makes sense, except that I didn't start with a base install and then add KDE and additional apps to it. I did a full-install from the Debian KDE CD #1 and it automatically installed KDE and over 700 packages at the time of the initial installation, without giving me any choice about what to install.

That's what I was referring to when I said that we KDE-only users deal with a few specific issues that Gnome and Gnome/KDE users probably don't have to deal with.

I don't think anyone should change how the default Gnome installation works, or how the default base installation-plus-build-it-yourself works, but I wish someone would take a hard look at that KDE-only installation CD and make it work in a way that's consistent with how the other installation CDs work. For example I think that if the KDE-only installation CD is going to install over 700 packages by default (like it did for me) including over 70 OpenGL screensavers, then I would strongly suggest that it should either install xscreensaver-gl too, to make sure that those screensavers work, or not install those screensavers by default.

In other words (mostly your words), I think that, just like the Gnome-only normal installation CD that most people use, the KDE-only installation CD should provide "a default install of (KDE) that has been previously organized and extensively debugged and double checked by testers." And it appears that that's exactly what it does do for the most part, except that it installs a bunch of OpenGL screensavers by default but it doesn't install xscreensaver-gl to make sure that they work. That can leave new KDE-only users with a problem that, while not very important to the functioning of their computer, is very disturbing to discover, because it makes them think that something (OpenGL, nvidia, xorg.conf -- this thread contains several examples) must be configured incorrectly, when actually, everything is fine and the only reason those screensavers don't work is because the KDE-only installation CD forgot to install xscreensaver-gl. :wink:
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#35 Post by llivv »

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#36 Post by ComputerBob »

llivv wrote:While the cats away ...... the mouses play :wink:
Very nice! :wink:
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