From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs vista build failures Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:26:35 +0000 Message-ID: <20080713232635.GD1076@muc.de> References: <36366a980807101702r5677d096g8e62ef5b3e278868@mail.gmail.com> <4eb0089f0807111217m66d6cf4el777c197c107ce034@mail.gmail.com> <87skug6tq5.fsf@catnip.gol.com> <4eb0089f0807111345h13eccdds9b2cf43370b94074@mail.gmail.com> <4eb0089f0807121340x5e26f6dbve03ef50b238f3a3a@mail.gmail.com> <87k5fph5rh.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <20080713214648.GB1076@muc.de> <487A783B.7060603@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1215990073 2669 80.91.229.12 (13 Jul 2008 23:01:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:01:13 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Chong Yidong , David Robinow , rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Lennart Borgman \(gmail\)" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jul 14 01:02:00 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KIAZo-0008EC-Kv for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:01:56 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:40420 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIAYw-0006mh-Nq for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:01:02 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIAYs-0006kR-4d for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:00:58 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KIAYr-0006ja-Jv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:00:57 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=47147 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KIAYr-0006jO-C0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:00:57 -0400 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:2929 helo=mail.muc.de) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KIAYq-0002fi-NJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:00:57 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 80057 invoked by uid 3782); 13 Jul 2008 23:00:54 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (pD9E23FD7.dip.t-dialin.net [217.226.63.215]) by colin2.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:00:51 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 10209 invoked by uid 1000); 13 Jul 2008 23:26:35 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <487A783B.7060603@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.5 (Fettercairn) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: FreeBSD 4.6-4.9 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:100657 Archived-At: Hi, Lennart! On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 11:48:43PM +0200, Lennart Borgman (gmail) wrote: > Alan Mackenzie wrote: > >For example, it took more than a day to get printing working (a > >standard Linux-supported Samsung Laser printer on the parallel port). > >It involved delving into the printing-HOWTO, and the kernel > >documentation, enabling the port support, rebuilding the kernel, > >struggling through the undocumented garbage that is (?was) CUPS, > >discarding that for a documented printing system, selecting a printing > >(formatting) driver by trial and error, ..... > >This was typical of most things - a long hard slog, fixing problem > >after problem after problem, a typical problem taking between 2 and 6 > >hours to resolve. > >And yes, at the end of that month GNU/Linux did indeed work > >fantastically. > From what you and others have written it looks like the weak point when > installing GNU/Linux is the hardware. Partly. Partly it's the fragmentation of documentation. Partly free software authors are a long way behind proprietary companies in making installation low-pain. Very little free software is documented anywhere near as well as Emacs. > I wonder if this still is the case with Ubuntu? I tried Ubuntu. It's an arrogant and patronising distribution - they try to pretend that there's no such thing as the root user, and they try to stop you finding out. They have their own idiosyncratic init program with a fragmented, undocumented configuration system. The response of my request for this documentation was "hey, why don't _you_ contribute it?". Still, if you can cope with that sort of attitude, Ubuntu seems to work relatively well. However, it was business as usual (2 - 6 hours per issue) when I got to installing framebuffer on my Ubuntu. It took me ~2 hours to get my Emacs to find my site-start.el - Debian (and thus Ubuntu too) puts a content-free site-start.el somewhere in /etc which blocks out your own real one. I keep meaning to complain about this. > In that case, should not investigating hardware be something that is > done as earlier as possible in the installation process - with a > possibility for the user to just back off if the installation process > finds hardware it does not recognize. Yes. I think a bigger problem is that each distribution tries to "encapsulate" the problem in its own way, but they end up just wrapping the problem in yet one more layer of undocumented complexity. Sometimes I think it would be better if the instructions just said "fill in these configuration files as follows, using your favourite text editor" rather than obfuscating the process with layers of scripts and GUI "friendliness". > I think that such a scheme could make GNU/Linux reputation in this > regard much better. Perhaps. Maybe the problem is intractable, due to the intrinsic complexity of GNU/Linux. Maybe Alfred's distribution is OK. It's something I'd far rather not have to bother about - I'd much rather just hack Emacs! -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).