On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:39:34 -0400
Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> Golinux told me that to change the window manager, when on the login
> screen, you repeatedly press F1 to cycle through the installed window
> managers. I confirm this, and will document it.
>
> However, I think somebody from Devuan should add to the login window's
> graphic (the stylized lightgreen and darkergreen Login graphic) the
> string "Press F1 to switch window managers." Today's computers should
> be discoverable, and this is just too easy not to do. I'd do it myself
> but I don't know which graphic, and probably my modification would be
> an aesthetic step backward.

Thanks for posting this, it's an issue I wanted to raise but glad someone
else brought it up first.

I've got a couple of other issues with the login screen that I was going to
bring up, and now is as good a time as any...

It's not an unusual scenario to find yourself at the login screen and
decide you really want to shutdown or reboot. However, unless you're
already an accomplished Linux geek, there's no obvious way to do that in
Devuan. There is no "exit button" on the login screen, and even if there
was, the mouse doesn't work. I've already tried all the function keys, and
only F1 does anything (ie offer a choice of window managers).

Aside from A)hitting your machine's reset button (if it has one), or
B)pulling the plug from the wall outlet (and removing the battery if it's a
laptop), you currently have these options:

1) Type username and password to login, and then exit from your logged-in
desktop (by clicking that little red-button icon). Alternatively, ctrl-alt
F2 though F6 will get you a text-mode terminal login from where you can log
in as root and execute the "shutdown" command - nevertheless, you do have
to log in first before you can reboot or halt, in which case you'd be
screwed if you forgot or didn't know the password.

2) Use of the magic keys. This is an old trick that even a lot of
experienced geeks don't know, because it's disabled in so many distros (ie
Ubuntu). Happily, it's enabled by default in Devuan - if you want to change
the default behavior, cd to the /etc/sysctl.d directory and see the
README.sysctl file for instructions. Anyway, to use magic keys, you've got
two options:

1) Hold down Alt and SysRq and type "reisub" to reboot, or
2) Alt-SysRq plus "reisuo" to shutdown.

If there is some other option for reboot/shutdown, I can't think of it at
the moment.

It could be that SLIM doesn't offer us any nice cutesy graphical option for
rebooting or shutdown. I'm not knowledgeable enough about SLIM to say. But
maybe there needs to be some graphical instructions on the screen so that
frustrated users wanting to exit resort to throwing the computer threw the
window.

Should I be filing a bug report about this?

cheers,
Robert

P.S. In case you all didn't know, I live in Taiwan and survived
super-typhoon Nepartak last week, but the cleaning up the mess is an
ongoing process. I happen to live in the city that was worst hit. Google
images, "Typhoon Nepartak Taitung" to see what it was like.