The GNOME Way

[saturnian]

6 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

Probably not as those are part of the distro. Here is a discussion about it

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/eoa2e2/minimal_mint/

 

 

And that's fine. Again, as with GNOME, those are part of the DE. Take it or leave it. Nothing against DEs, though, because there are certainly advantages to having one installed. But sometimes it's like what the OP in that thread wrote, "I don't want to be pulling down and installing updates for a full DE that I'm not going to use..." Well, I've got my Bullseye installation that I did via netinstall, with only Openbox, and that's been great. Eventually I'm gonna do something similar with Arch, but so far I've always started out with Xfce in Arch, then later added Openbox or Fluxbox to use.

[raymac46]

Everything OK with a Linux Mint update today. And I have never had a problem with LXQt on Arch. So far, at least.

Edited August 22, 2021 by raymac46

[Hedon James]

19 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

Everythink OK with a Linux Mint update today. And I have never had a problem with LXQt on Arch. So far, at least.

One of the things i LOVE about LXQT is their emphasis on "modularity".  Rather than a monolithic DE, they provide a collection of tools for DE functionality.  You can use all, one, or none.  In fact, when I lose my right-click root menu (Flux/Open/Pek) when Debian Buster updates from LXQT 0.14, I'm probably going to start logging into WM sessions, and using the lxqt-panels as "skins" for the WM environment.

 

As I type this, that might be an interesting experiment for Saturnians issue?  Log into a WM session and see if the "lock" issue is replicated.  If the issue doesn't replicate, you know it's DE related; if it does replicate, it's probably systemd related.  Not definitively, but strong indicators....zeroing in on the bullseye, so to speak.

[raymac46]

I have LXQt on my Thinkpad with Debian but since I have never had the lock issue troubles there, I could not say for sure whether it is  a DE or apt or systemd issue. Since I got the lock with Cinnamon on Linux Mint I don't think it is exclusively DE. Maybe saturnian could try as I am pretty sure he has some of the *box setups on his Debian install.

[raymac46]

Booted up the Thinkpad with LXQt in Bullseye and the update worked like a charm. That proves exactly nothing.

[saturnian]

I have several Debian installations here. Various setups, including GNOME, Xfce, Fluxbox, Openbox, and LXQt. The lock issue was happening only with GNOME. I'm nearly certain that the problem is solved, but I don't think I'll know for sure until Debian releases some security updates again.

 

If anything is being downloaded (or even installed), there should be a record of it in /var/log, right? I was thinking /var/log/apt/history.log or /var/log/dpkg.log.

 

I don't know what happened in raymac46's case, with Cinnamon in Mint.

[saturnian]

On 8/19/2021 at 7:00 AM, raymac46 said:

I wonder if your solution works if you use Wayland as your display server?

 

Confirmed, works fine with Wayland.

 

So, after following the steps shown here, GNOME Software no longer autostarts, and automatic updates are disabled: https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/gn8rs4/how_to_disable_gnome_software_autostart/

 

That post shows how to make the changes from the command line, but of course a GUI approach works fine, too. To summarize, here's what I did:

 

- Copied the /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop file into ~/.config/autostart using my preferred file manager (Double Commander), and edited the new file using my preferred text editor (Geany).

- Went to Settings > Search and disabled "Software".

- Used dconf-editor to make the dconf changes.

Tested in both Buster and Bullseye.

[wa4chq]

When I first got interested in Linux (only did it because of xeyes) I remember not really liking the look of KDE...but I did give it a try.  Gnome had a better look, in my opinion....maybe it was the icons or the "curvy" look it had....but then I stopped using it and I think I went on to Fluxbox.

Edited August 28, 2021 by wa4chq

[securitybreach]

Ha, I forgot about xeyes and kind of surprised that it is still around. Cmatrix is also still around amazing enough..

[saturnian]

1 hour ago, wa4chq said:

...but then I stopped using it and I think I went on to Fluxbox.

 

Fluxbox is great -- I'm actually typing this from Fluxbox in Arch. The MX-21 Fluxbox edition, now in beta, is gonna be an interesting release (see: https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-21-fluxbox-beta-1-iso-images-for-testing/).

[securitybreach]

I was a fan of fluxbox for a few years before moving to tiling WMs.

 

[securitybreach]

53 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

Ha, I forgot about xeyes and kind of surprised that it is still around. Cmatrix is also still around amazing enough..

 

Sorry, offtopic

 

This shows you how dated it was in the beginning:

 

Quote

CMatrix is a program I wrote one evening because I didn’t want to have to run Wind*ws to see the cool scrolling lines from ‘The Matrix’, my fave movie.  If you haven’t seen this movie and you are a fan of computers or sci-fi in general, go see this movie!!!  I have seen it twice, and I’m pondering seeing it again before it comes out on VHS.

 

https://www.asty.org/cmatrix/

[wa4chq]

I never messed with cmatrix but I did always want to get the little mailbox configured so when I received mail, the flag went up....I can't remember if I did or not....  Fluxbox was fun.  After a while, I really had mine tricked out.  But left it for tiling windows...

Early KDE kinda reminded me of the BeOS look. 

 

[wa4chq]

A bit off topic but I think the mailbox thing I was talking about was xbiff....

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by wa4chq

[securitybreach]

2 minutes ago, wa4chq said:

I think the mailbox thing I was talking about was xbiff....

 

 

Still around