Distribution quotes of the week [LWN.net]

I personally believe this can explain the kind of resistance you are finding on this matter from Debian people: I am not sure that it would be true to say that Debian people like to go together, but in a sense we need to do so, because there is no other way to manage a gigantic thing like Debian, even less so when you have (as we have) to keep contact with the wider free software/open source ecosystem. There are many different people, with different opinions and motivations, so compromise is something that you have to accept.

— Giovanni Mascellani

Debian/Devuan is not a ready-to-use-out-of-the-box distro like Ubuntu or Mint. It's more a pick-what-you-want-and-carry-on distro.

— Enzo Nicosia

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Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 23, 2018 18:16 UTC (Sun) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (5 responses)

There is no such system as Devuan/Debian. There is Debian, and a forked Devuan, increasingly distinct. It is reasonable to write Mint/Debian because there is also a Mint/Ubuntu.

It took me some time to learn systemd. Every time I was confused, it turned out to be because systemd was more powerful than I had guessed. Almost every complaint I have read about systemd (vs complaints about LP's interpersonal habits, and some about those) have turned out to be false, mistaken, or actively misleading. Lately even BSDers quote them to me, in all innocence.

But I don't get where Debian is supposed to be less ready to use than Ubuntu or Mint. I have to set up the same things everywhere -- Mate desktop, sloppy mouse focus, Emacs-style edit key bindings, and shift-lock-is-ctrl -- to get a usable system.

The real mystery is why all desktop envs go to such lengths to conceal the availability of Emac-style edit key bindings for UI text-boxes.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 24, 2018 16:18 UTC (Mon) by muep (subscriber, #86754) [Link] (4 responses)

> The real mystery is why all desktop envs go to such lengths to conceal the availability of Emac-style edit key bindings for UI text-boxes.

I had no idea of such functionality being available. Would you like to share some more details about this?

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 27, 2018 1:11 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (3 responses)

Run dconf-editor. Go to org/mate/desktop/interface, and choose gtk-key-theme.
Turn off "default value", and enter "Emacs" in the text box.

Do the same in org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-key-theme, and any other desktop configurations you can find.
XFCE has a settings editor, with a xsettings/GTK/KeyThemeName, but setting it to Emacs has had limited effect, for me (but it might just be Qubes interfering). At least it works in the XFCE settings editor boxes.

It used to be documented right there in the gtk-key-theme box, but somebody at Gnome thought it would be cleaner without useful documentation, so deleted it. ("There might be other themes available, and listing only Emacs could be confusing." Or something.) The docs were removed before Mate split off from Gnome, and have not been put back in Mate yet. Of course Gnome did not accept a patch restoring the docs, on principle. Or something. They might, now, but pigs might fly too.

It is not an Emacs text editor, of course; it just implements the key bindings that bash uses for its emacs edit mode -- ctrl-A to left margin, ctrl-K delete to end, ctrl-Y yank, etc. Just enough to maintain sanity.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 27, 2018 11:11 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (2 responses)

Launch GNOME Tweaks, go to "Keyboard & Mouse", switch "Emacs Input" slider from Off to On. There's a documentation line explaining what it does just below the slider.

Don't overthink things.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 27, 2018 16:10 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

I just have this line in `~/.gtk/gtkrc-2.0` and `~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini`:

gtk-key-theme-name = "Vi"

I imagine other values are valid there :) .

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Dec 28, 2018 14:53 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

There is also a ~/.xsettingsd file, with

Gtk/KeyThemeName = "Emacs"

It is not easy to discover which programs respond to which setting.