Terrible experience with Slackware 14 - warning rant
 

So I did a clean install of Slackware 14 the other day.
Did initrd, and lilo etc and none of them gave me any errors.
But system would not boot past certain point when the boot process is scrolling through.
And I was just trying to boot to a terminal, init3.
No other Slackware version did this to me before, and I've been running Slack since 3.3.
After 3 hours of troubleshooting and getting nowhere I decided to blacklist the novueau module.
Sure enough, after finally finding it in extra, and installing, system booted just fine.
Why the heck is it in extra and not installed as on/off config in etc/rc.d?
Obviously the driver is still buggy and should be treated as such.
I have a Geforce GTX 570 HD which is not even the most recent generation of cards.
But the ordeal didn't end there.
XFCE would not work right, no panel would show up, just desktop with my old icons.
Even after deleting all of XFCE configuration it still would not work.
Where the hell are all the configuration files hiding now?
.config, .local, .cache, there is a bit of XFCE or Thunar everywhere.
What a mess.
And I see that XFCE has now its own Windows-like registry editor just like Gnome.
And it has a bunch of Gnome shit incorporated.
Why the fuck do I need all these gvfs turds running all the time?!
2438 ? 00:00:00 gvfs-fuse-daemo
2488 ? 00:00:00 gvfs-udisks2-vo
2496 ? 00:00:00 gvfs-gphoto2-vo
2503 ? 00:00:00 gvfsd-trash
After another couple hours fiddling with it and stopping and starting the xfce4-panel manually from terminal, it finally loaded up.
What could possibly have caused it to not work when starting with the xsession but work ok when stopping and then starting from a terminal?!
It's behaving like a typical Microsoft Windows crap that has a mind of its own.
And now when I plug in a flash drive and open it from the desktop icon that shows up, then want to remove it, the right click menu only shows eject, no unmount like before. When I click the eject, the icon is gone even though flash drive is still plugged in.
Seriously, XFCE, instead of getting better, has instead turned into such a low quality, buggy, unpredictable, illogical mess.
I don't understand what have they been doing for over a year. There are no visible improvements and it's barely any different from 4.6
And so the last Linux desktop is now unusable.
I understand that Slackware itself is dependent on the shenanigans of the upstream desktop development, and system components, like the kernel and Xorg, development so I don't blame Slackware at all.
But it saddens me to see what a mess the whole Linux desktop ecosystem is now.

That you don't blame Slackware is not seen in your headline. You warn people on Slackware, not on XFCE or nouveau (which is known to have problems with some cards from the GTX5xx series). You also should have noticed that there are not dozens of posts like yours on LQ, from people having having problems with XFCE or nouveau, so you should have determined from that that most people do not have the problems you have with that software.
That means: There is no general decrease in quality (aside from the Gnome parts used in XFCE), but a problem with your particular machine/settings.

I have had no such issues. The nouveau in /testing and mesa-9.0 are perfectly stable. Not a single crash since I installed them.

I don't use XFCE or gvfs.

Why the F would there be an rc.d script for a specific graphics kernel module? Also XFCE 4.10 is nice and so is Slackware 14.

The first rule of Slackware Club is: Read CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT
The second rule of Slackware Club is: Read CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT!

Someone who has used slackware since 3.3, should know this by now.

If you had done so, you'd have seen the section that says that KMS is used by default now and the warning that some framebuffers can have issues with this and you should use nomodeset and/or vga=normal when booting.


As for the xfce stuff, I kind of agree with you. I don't like the increasing use of Gnome components and the way it is heading either, but rather than rant about it, I just choose not to use it.

For people having a NVIDIA GPU and not sure about its support with nouveau I would simply blacklist it, either by or by installing the extra/xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist package, which is what you ended up doing:
(1) this will prevent the nouveau kernel module to take handover of the console during the boot sequence
(2) letting you with a working console in VGA mode so that you can adapt your configuration as needed (provided you boot at run level 3)
(3) but the nouveau X driver will still be used (and the nouveau kernel module still be loaded) when you start X if it works for your GPU
(4) when you go back to console mode (Ctrl+Alt+Del or Ctrl+Alt+F1) you will benefit of a frame buffer console (again, if nouveau can drive your GPU).

So maybe we could suggest that nouveau be blacklisted by default in Slackware. Not sure though about the popularity of that change among the NVIDIA GPU users.

Other than that, about your statement that "obviously the driver is still buggy and should be treated as such" I have two remarks:
(1) YMMV depending on your GPU
(2) Alternatives are even worse for most users (unless you consider the blob, which for easy to understand reasons is not included in Slackware).

Most of the gvfs daemons can be turned off by adding:

export GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE=1
export GVFS_REMOTE_VOLUME_MONITOR_IGNORE=1

to your .bash_login.
Ed

I did read it, and all the other readmes there as I also user RAID (and had trouble with the latest raid setup).
I've always had vga=normal set in my lilo (last about 5 years I think) and still it didn't help

Slackovado,
I've been running Slackware14 XFCE 4.10 on a frankenstein AMD64 X2 rig, dual mismatched monitors (14" LCD + 17" CRT) with GT430. Fired right up on install (via initrd), stock kernel, after a full install, right to the CLI. I also switched to the SBo nvidia slackbuilds since nouveau can be problematic during boot (as mentioned earlier in this thread). XFCE runs fine once you are aware of its quirks - any DE has its quirkiness and that is why don't run KDE. Mine also was a clean install, so I had to CAREFULLY restore various settings ($HOME, ntp, NFS, SAMBA, CUPS, desktop eyecandy, etc), since there were quite a few changes.

Here is my take:

1. If you don't like Xfce gnomish-ness, don't run it. Slackware comes with lots of DE/WM to choose. Or try LXDE.
2. If you leave nouveau active, with a known (or possible) incompatibly with your GPU, how is that Slackware's or X.org's fault?
3. If you fire up Xfce 4.10 with your old 4.6 configuration in $HOME, and everything is screwy, how is that Slackware's fault? How is that Xfce's fault?
4. If the DVD/CD boots so you can install, but the installed version (with initrd) won't boot, then YOU did something wrong.

In other words, why are you freaking ranting senselessly in a Slackware forum because you don't like some of the packages shipped by default? None of the issues you report are real problems; previous posts have pointed out "fixes."

Essentially, don't attribute malice or incompetence to a F/OSS software project when the real issue is PEBKAC, 99+% or the time.

Because there are so few graphics chip manufacturers and even less drivers for Linux in the whole wide world and so it makes sense to account for such potential show stoppers and take extra care to make the graphics set up as painless as possible.
Especially now that it can prevent even booting into terminal.
If a driver prevents you from booting into your terminal then there is something seriously fucked up about it.
And it's not first time I've run into problems with KMS, it's been trouble for years and should be taken into account by Slackware and not just put a little note in README and script in extra on an install cd.
So it should be easier to turn off during install or at some point when trouble happens (rc.d was just an example and probably not the best place).

Thank you.
You analyzed the situation very nicely.
And I agree that enabling it or disabling it will always hurt someone. In this case it was me :)
I will probably always use the binary blob as I'm a gamer and like to fire up a FPS once in a while.
But I don't discount the open source driver and certainly understand its importance for free software and am glad that it exists.
So there could be a solution that makes it a little easier for both, like a setting during install that asks the user whether they use Novueau or binary Nvidia driver and let them set it right there and thereby taking one more potential disaster out or the equation.

My advice: just use the proprietary NVidia driver with your card. As for Xfce 4.10, everything JustWorks(tm) here. Since Slackware 14.0 came out, I've installed it on a few dozen desktops. We also use it on all desktops in our training room for Linux training. No complaints whatsoever.

Cheers,

Niki

I had the same issue as the OP when it came to the video drivers. I use a GTX 550i Fermi GPU and had to blacklist the nouveau driver before the reboot after the install from dvd. Once it was blacklisted, everything was fine and then I went ahead and installed the NVIDIA proprietary driver.

Agreed. I'm running 14.0 on three work stations and -current on one PC (all with XFce 4.10). No issues to speak of here. Many thanks to Mr. Volkerding and the Slackware Team! :)

From where you got mesa 9.0

I should have added:
(5) if you want a frame buffer console now but do not need X just type as root "modprobe nouveau" after booting.

I compiled it myself.

What starts gvfsd? NetworkManager?

gvfs has been giving me grief as well. I can mount a removable medium as user, but XFCE (or whatever)
requires root privs to let me UNmount.... lsof told me gvfs was involved. Retarded.

I think the occasional rant, even if some points are misguided, is entirely appropriate for this forum.
If a system you love is being changed by people who don't share your KISS philosophy, and basic system utils and tools and services are being constantly changed, and (IMO) monkeyed with, where does one go to complain? The Man imself is at the mercy of these upstream hooligans!

To those who say "just don't use gvfs" or "don't use Network Manager", or "just turn such-and-such off", I say this:
How long can we be expected to do this, and at what point does our system become...not our system anymore?

The OP's problem with Nvidia boot failures seems to have afflicted a number of Nvidia cards in combination with nouveau and the 3.2/3.3 series kernels. As soon as an attempt is made to launch nouveau, everything goes bellyup.

Very annoying because even install media won't boot. The fix was, and is, to use nomodeset and then install Nvidia's driver ASAP. However, I recall at least one distro install routine that crashed before you could splice that in.

I don't know which component was to blame, but, in my experience, the problem went away with the 3.4 kernels.