dropline gnome is pure EVIL

[deanrantala]

Well.. I decided to try it. The much talked about dropline. As a slacker I felt it my duty to try it out. And that was my second biggest mistake (the first being that I thought about it)

So I spent almost an hour installing it (choose the full first time install). It seemed to install without error. But that was it.

Rebooted.

Now I have nothing but twm. No gnome, no KDE, I can launch xfce and windowmaker, but thats about it.

I checked my .xinitrc, inittab, rc.local, and the usual. Could not get my beloved KDE or Gnome. So it was back to the dropline installer to uninstall this thing nice and quietly.

Thats the 3rd mistake I made.

As of this writing, I no longer have any sound library, xmms, screensavers,Xine, IRC clients, in fact just a bout 2/3 of the sofware I once had is now gone. I am lucky that netscape is still running. And I honestly do not think I am gonna recover from this one.

Dropline: I am comming for you. Plain and simple. And when I find you, I am gonna have eveyone of you saying the "hail qt"

For those of you (newbees) who are thinking of trying dropline: do as you wish. Perhaps you will have a better experience than I. But just so that you do know: it might really mess you up.

Now wheres my slack 9.0 disk... Time for a clean install. I'll be back later.

[mart_man00]

And when I find you, I am gonna have eveyone of you saying the "hail qt"
You learn well young grasshoppa:p

[Satanic Atheist]

Dean, thanks for letting us know.

I'm a serious slacker myself, but I still think that SysVInit is better than BSD style init.

As it happens, slacking is just an excuse to not bloody do anything. I'll be avoiding Dropline, that's for sure.

Next machine? LFS. All the way. And my parents want to take this machine off me???

NEVER!!!

James

[serz]

I wanted to try Dropline GNOME too, I did it a while ago...

And well, I had exactly the same problem...

Got gnome-dropline working.. played with it a little and I uninstalled it.

I lost some stuff that I *didn't* install with dropline-gnome, like you well said.

After this, I had to spend some installing the packages that dropline-gnome didn't install, but it removed them.

I think they need to fix some stuff in the install.

[hard candy]

Maybe that's why they call it "dropline", they know you'll be dropping them a line one day! :D
Thanks for the heads-up. I was starting to get it in my consciousness that it was out there. Now it will stay "out there".
Look at the bright side, a brand new installation like a young bride on a honeymoon. :)

[je_fro]

I'm sorry your system got hosed. I had success by not installing any X stuff at all, initially. Then using lynx to get dropline and set it all up worked like a charm--- instant gnome-2.4

[DSwain]

hm, that's odd because when i ran slack 9 and installed it, slack actually started working much better, at least how it looked. seemed to be slightly more efficent too.

[SDS]

I think it messes up when you've already got GNOME installed. For, when I first installed dropline GNOME, I was screwed in a similar fashion, so I just uninstalled dropline GNOME, removed my GNOME desktop, and ran the dropline installer again with success. It's a nice little program.

[sclebo05]

just yesterday i was contemplating installing that. now, however, i will steer clear. just know that your post may save a few souls, so in some small way your machine crash helped the community......:cool:

get it reinstalled, and slack on my friend!

[deanrantala]

Look at the bright side, a brand new installation like a young bride on a honeymoon.

LOL! Nothing like a fresh Slack install!

Actually, I don't doubt for a minute that it is a very nice desktop. But there are obviously bugs needed to be worked out. All the install should do (I feel) is install the desktop, overwrite the default gnome if installed, and add the dropline entry to the pkgtool setup window. Sometimes too much autoconfiguration for us nerds is devistating. :)

I am dearly trying to save this install at the moment. I am re-installing dropline, just so it puts everything back. I figure "I took it off, now it can re-install it" :)

I'll see how it works out and keep the progress posted for anyone who might end up in this situation in the future. Or for those of you who are just curious :)

Peace

[deanrantala]

Nothing.

I came

I Saw

I Slacked

And I hosed my PC:rolleyes:

At least I managed to keep good humor about it.:) I was also able to save all my important stuff (what would we do without knoppix:))

Anyway, I might just do a HD install of knoppix - been meaning to play with this apt-get thingy for a while :) Besides, I'm prolly getting a new G5 next couple weeks anyway, so I guess I'm not too worried about this box anyways.

[SDS]

Hey, could you drool on that G5 for me when you get it? Those things are sweet. Just thinking about having a G5 makes me feel warm inside. ;)

[JohnT]

There is excellent help over at Droplines site.....myself.....I really like the effort put out by the developers. They are pretty much on top of any problems you might have. Its highly configurable...a perfect match for Slack.:p
Oh...and no probs on the install here.

[Artie_Effim]

heh, the same thing happened here, hosed the system. I just got sone a 3 day gentoo install to 'correct' the b0rked dropline upgrade and I'm keeping with it.

[deanrantala]

Originally posted by SDS
Hey, could you drool on that G5 for me when you get it? Those things are sweet. Just thinking about having a G5 makes me feel warm inside. ;)

Will do :) Actually, if the Linux devel team decides to completely drop all support for OSS before replacing it with something a little better than ALSA, then I will most likely be done with linux for good. It is just because as someone who actually buys boxed sets of every distro I use, I am getting tired of supporting a community of devs that are constantly pushing undeveloped stuff down my throat like that. At leat I know that everything (including EAX and real time control) will work under OSX.

Yeah, obviously this seems to be a common prob. I'm gonna try reporting it - not sure if the devs over at dropline care what I might have to say, but I'll report it.

In the meantime.....

SLACK 9.1 IS OUT!!!!

Lets see what the hype is about :)

[proc.prophet]

I just did a force install on 9.1 and it all went off without a hitch. :) Dunno, maybe I'm just lucky.