I've now done another install of daedalus on the laptop on which I
first experienced the problem (I remade and formatted all the
partitions). This time, all was well: x-terminal-emulator mapped to
xfce4-terminal.wrapper, as expected.

Assuming that this wasn't a definite problem which was noticed and
corrected - then the only conclusion to which I can come is that
several packages provide x-terminal-emulator, and during the first
install, for some reason, zutty was the one which floated up to the
surface and got picked as the default. If so - then I guess the problem
is waiting to happen again.

Personally, I'd tend to argue that zutty shouldn't provide x-terminal-
emulator - at least as yet. The default terminal is just too vital a
piece of linux functionality to allow the use of a terminal application
which is picky about the underlying graphics hardware/software: zutty
needs to be more robust and have some kind of failover in case of
lower-spec graphics capability. But I'm sure that if I put those
comments to those concerned, I'd be told that I didn't know what I was
talking about :(


On Sat, 2025-04-19 at 11:49 +1000, Ralph Ronnquist via Dng wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 19, 2025 at 12:42:50AM +0100, Peter Duffy wrote:
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > Thanks for confirming the problem - when the latest test install of
> > daedalus was fine, I was beginning to think I'd done something
> > silly :(
> >
> > I've had a look through the install logs on the laptop:
> > /var/log/apt/history.log showed that zutty was included
> > automatically.
> > And like you, in the actual installation sequence in
> > /var/log/apt/term.log, zutty was immediately followed by xfce4-
> > terminal. So - factoring in what Ralph said about the last actual
> > terminal package being the default for update-alternatives, that
> > sounds
> > like a convincing scenario. The main remaining mystery is why zutty
> > was
> > being pulled in automatically.
> >
> > I've just done "aptitude why zutty" on the laptop, and it gave the
> > following:
> >
> > i   task-desktop Depends  xorg
> > i A xorg         Depends  xterm | x-terminal-emulator
> > i A zutty        Provides x-terminal-emulator       
> >
> > (Which seems to pose more questions than it answers . . . )
>
> Yes, indeed. Such "alternative dependency" would typically be
> satsified by pulling in xterm. Afaik apt doesn't bring in any package
> merely by it being provider. In addition xfce4-terminal as well as
> others also provide x-terminal-emulator and that would alphabetically
> pop up as option before zutty. It remains a mystery! :)
>
> Ralph.
>
> >
> >
> > On Sat, 2025-04-19 at 00:00 +0100, Andrew Bower wrote:
> > > Hi Peter,
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 09:46:30PM +0100, Peter Duffy wrote:
> > > > I installed Debian Bookworm into a virtualbox VM, selecting
> > > > xfce as
> > > > the
> > > > desktop (overriding the default, which was Gnome), and then ran
> > > > "update-alternatives -config x-terminal-emulator". It was set
> > > > to
> > > > use
> > > > /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal.wrapper.  zutty wasn't installed. I
> > > > tried
> > > > installing it just to see if it worked, and if it automatically
> > > > configured x-terminal-emulator to point to itself. It did work,
> > > > and
> > > > it
> > > > didn't reconfigure x-terminal-emulator.
> > > >
> > > > So - based on that, it would seem that this is specific to
> > > > devuan
> > > > daedalus - at least at the time that I installed it earlier
> > > > today.
> > >
> > > This isn't specific to Devuan Daedalus. I experienced exactly the
> > > same
> > > thing: zutty being installed unexpectedly along with XFCE4.
> > >
> > > But in my case it was Debian sid:
> > >
> > > 2023-10-27 19:43:28 install zutty:i386 <none>
> > > 0.14.6.20230701+dfsg1-2
> > >
> > > Interestingly, the very next package to be installed was:
> > >
> > > 2023-10-27 19:43:28 install xfce4-terminal:i386 <none> 1.1.1-1
> > >
> > > They both have priority 40.
> > >
> > > > I'm currently doing a new test install of daedalus into another
> > > > virtualbox VM. At the moment, I'm thinking that this must have
> > > > been
> > > > a
> > > > recent error, and maybe has been corrected upstream by now -
> > > > and if
> > > > so,
> > > > maybe by now it's percolated into the devuan repos. (I think it
> > > > would
> > > > only be noticeable if someone installed daedalus onto old
> > > > hardware,
> > > > or
> > > > if they noticed that the fonts looked a bit weird. I'm not sure
> > > > - I
> > > > haven't delved into what's actually behind the zutty error as
> > > > yet.)
> >
> >
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