My first DontZap use case while testing F11 beta

[Anders Rayner-Karlsson]

* Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> [20090417 21:15]:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Anders Rayner-Karlsson
> <anders at trudheim.co.uk> wrote:
> > * Matthew Garrett <mjg at redhat.com> [20090417 18:52]:
> 
> [ snip ]
> 
> > So - from my perspective, being one of those hate-object "@RH" people,
> > while C-A-Bs was available, my choice was not to use it because the
> > work was more valuable than the 3-4 minutes to assess the situation
> > and to try a few ways to recover it.
> 
> 
> Having that choice was good though, wasn't it? In the same way you
> hadn't copied your keys to another machine, you maybe hadn't added the
> new zap option to xorg.conf, so you no longer have that option.

Having the choice didn't make a blind bit of difference in this
instance as I was determined to keep the work. If I in F11 want Zap
capabilities, I can enable it. I'll probably leave it unmapped, so I
am encouraged to file defects against misbehaving applications
instead.

> And I don't think a new user would be expected to type blind in a
> console... so they would have had to hit the reboot button, or the
> shutdown button if they don't have a reboot button.

Either way, they'd lose the content of their session. If X really is
scrogged, hitting the power-button for a controlled shutdown so that
the hardware is reset to sane state is not a bad idea *for the new
users with limited skills*.

If you are savvy enough to know about Zap, you're savvy enough to
switch it on, just like with SysRq's.

> For me my desktop has as many important services running as I have
> apps -- so restarting X is not as costly as restarting the machine.

I'm glad for you, that you have an X-session so lightweight that you
can Zap it without losing any work. I long for the days when I had so
little to do on my desktop that I could make such a statement. ;)

--
/Anders