Re: MATE Desktop fails

[Felix Lechner]

Hi Gottfried,

On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 2:26 PM Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de> wrote:
>
> I would like to stay with GNU Guix if possible,

Thank you for your continued goodwill toward Guix.

> but it takes a lot of time at the moment,

My first month with Guix was one of the hardest ever. I was so
desperate and felt so small, I hardly slept. My todo list was
enormous, and anguish filled my heart.

> the MATE desktop can’t use an additional monitor besides the laptop,

Is this under X or Wayland? Please see if the eyes in 'xeyes' follow
your mouse. In X, you can try something like

    xrandr --output VGA-1 --auto --left-of LVDS-1

xrandr will tell you the names of all available outputs when you run
it without arguments.

> I started to learn Emacs some month ago, but it takes a lot of time, and
> I am not able to use your approach with EXWM because I don’t have the
> time to study computer science/Informatik.

You shouldn't, and I do not recommend it.

> Of course Emacs is very good and I would like to learn to use it little
> by little.

Emacs is an editor for you (and a way of life for me). It's actually a
bit like yoga. You can go into the pose as deeply as you like, but you
should not go further than you are comfortable at that moment.

> I also share that hope, because Debian works well, I simply left it
> because I want GNU and a rolling release distro.

You could track Debian testing [1] as I did for twenty years. It's a
rolling release in which software is guaranteed to build on all
official machine types.

For the hardy, there is also Debian unstable. [2] That's kind of what
you are getting with Guix, although the latter is a lot more stable
and has dramatically less danger of data loss.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable

> I would be satisfied if Guix System manages to use some desktops on a
> basic level, simply to use it for the daily needs.

Gnome 3 seems to be reasonably well supported on my family's
computers, which run Guix.

> I am learning to be satisfied with the basics.

Welcome to the club. May your freedom serve as compensation for your toils.

> It would be interesting if the gdm display manager in MATE desktop would
> work, if somebody updates the MATE desktop to the version 1.27 (now 1.24.1).

GDM should offer a MATE session in the login screen when both are
installed, but I haven't tried.

Thanks for sticking with us!

Kind regards
Felix