Some annoying little problems with SlackE17. Anybody have them?
 

Hi,
After I got completely mad at KDE in 14.0, I decided to try something new and found Enlightenment and SlackE17. Now my laptop is quiet and cool all the time and I am very pleased of almost everything but a few things.

- the mixer applet is working fine but instead of PCM or MASTER channel, the second HEADPHONE channel is assigned to the main slider and the keyboard keys. I couldn't find how to change this.

- the lock-screen says "No PAM support was build into enlightenment". Can I do something to fix that?

- when I have multiple windows on both desktops (I use only two) and glide between them with the mouse, the screen freezes a little. I have GeForce GT 435M with 2GB of ram and a recent nvidia driver installed and configured. Is it normal for the screen to do that?

- the "x" on the windows sometimes doesn't work so I have to close them from the "Tasks" on the shelf. Especially with Skype.

If anybody can help, especially with the sound mixer and the freezing, please, I will be immensely grateful.

Thank you.

I've not problems with mixer.

Slackware doesn't come with PAM, so the easiest way is to specify and external screen lock command in the E17 options, like `xlock` or `slock`, if you've got them installed.

Animations seem quite smooth to me, on an old laptop with a build in intel graphics set up.

Haven't noticed windows refusing to close.

I have noticed that every now and again the whole thing will crash with a message about having "SEGARV"ed, I believe, and ask if I want to recover or exit. Happened a lot on earlier versions, but still occasionally happens on the "stable" release we've got now.

It doesn't crash ever. Runs like a rock except those buggies. Thank you for the "lock" solution.

Right click on the mixer, choose Settings. Look at channels and select the one you want. This froze my system, but it may work for you.

With respect to the window freezing, do you have the composite module enabled (both in xorg.conf and Enlightenment settings) or are you using software rendering?

The mixer applet is getting even more puzzling. Every time I start the pc the chanels in the mixer change. Either the PCM is missing or MASTER. Sometimes it shows both. At least the main slider is now connected to PCM or MASTER (whatever is there at the moment) and not to HEADPHONE. Can it be a problem of alsa?

I have composite enabled in Enlightenment settings. About xorg.conf - it was generated automatically when I installed the nvidia driver and I didn't touch it since. But looking at it now, I don't see anything about composite. Is it a module I have to add there?

Could be ALSA... not sure. Have you tried setting your default levels through alsamixer and then saving using alsactl?

With respect to composite, in my xorg.conf I have an Extensions section enabling the X11 Composite extension. Look here - http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFre...ppendix-s.html

(The two http's are not a typo.)

E17 is using much more CU than usual using OpenGL on 3.7.2, but switching to software rendering solves the problem.

Thank you for the help. I will switch to software rendering and see if the problem persist.

I reconfigured Alsa and now the channels are in the applet after every boot - couldn't find what the problem was. By the way changing the desktop theme makes them disappear and a few restarts are needed to get them back.

A little off topic. I tried to make a left mouse button binding for the Mplayer menu but didn't quite get how to use the bindings menu. Can you help me with this?

I've never attempted this before. But from the settings menu, it seems that bindings are only for Enlightenment 'functions', but I could be wrong. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Just to provide the feedback I promised. Switching to software rendering made only one difference - my laptop became noisy again. The behavior of the windows didn't change at all. Now I am trying to make small changes in the settings to see if I can at least get rid of some of the problems. I will post again if any success is achieved.

Thank you all for the help.

I have no problems with freezing could be a driver bug or other strange problem but not sure (i too use a Nvidia card with the latest binary driver), it certainly is not normal though.
I have no channel issues with Alsa either.

The unresponsive ghost windows bug happens with GTK apps and is a known issue that happens when you have composite enabled.
There is no reason for you to switch to software rendering as far as i remember that should make no difference so you should be safe to return to OpenGL rendering.

you could ask about the freezing on the #e channel on irc.freenode.net