F11: xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

Bill Crawford billcrawford1970 at gmail.com
Tue Mar 31 10:19:51 UTC 2009


On Monday 30 March 2009 21:57:10 Colin Walters wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> > Colin Walters wrote:
> >> No, the right solution is to examine the cases for why people were
> >> using the key before, and come up with a design which addresses them.
> >
> > This will not help at all, because people expect to be able to use the
> > current key combo, not something new they never heard of.
>
> Nothing says that a new "oh crap" key system couldn't be
> Ctrl-Alt-Backspace as well; what key it is exactly I see as distinct
> from what the key provides.  Though as for which specific key,
> unifying it with Ctrl-Alt-Delete would make sense to me, but I
> appreciate the backwards compatibilty/habit argument.

Yes, this is the point :o) it might have been better to announce "we're changing 
the default key combination" and include instructions on how to change it back 
if needed.

I don't like the argument that users need protecting from this. If you push the 
power switch on anything in your kitchen it's generally going to go on or off 
immediately; the reason we do it different on a PC *is* mainly to do with data 
loss but also to allow its dual use as a "suspend or hibernate" key. It's the 
same with a "kill my X server" button: sure, maybe insist it be pressed more 
than once, or change where the button is, ... but saying we can't have one 
because it's sharp is ... well, maybe the X.org developers shouldn't be allowed 
sharp objects. Jus' sayin' ;o)




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