Please revert Xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

[Gerry Reno]

David Miller wrote:
> From: Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net>
> Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:42:13 -0400
>
>   
>> This is smoke and mirrors.  This is not about worrying about people
>> accidentally hitting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace while working on their
>> papers.  I've never in thirty years of *nix experience working in
>> companies with tens of thousands of employees ever see this happen.
>> This is about implementing a change for Emacs users so that "their"
>> similar keystroke combinations don't conflict.  And that's not
>> something that is affecting tens of millions of people.  That is
>> affecting only the tiny Emacs community.
>>     
>
> Wrong and wrong and wrong.
>
> People here, like me, have told you that whilst they've used X for
> years, and that they know what the keysequence is and what it does,
> they have still hit it by accident and lost work.
>
> I have fat fingers, other people do too.  It's not about user
> education either, like you continually claim.
>
> And unlike the reset button and the power cord, the X server ZAP
> sequence isn't protected in any "reasonable" way from accidental use.
> Your fingers are flying over the "big red button" every time you type,
> and that's what makes it a bad default.
>   
If this were so, then you would have had thousands of people clamoring 
in the forums about such a 'terrible' default. And we have seen no such 
clamoring. And this Ctrl-Alt-Backspace historical keystroke combination 
has been around forever. Your assertions about this so-called accidental 
use are vastly overblown. I defy you to produce any credible documented 
major impact events from such "accidental use". From experience I can 
tell you, it just doesn't happen in any statistically significant way.

I would hope that all Xorg stakeholders will see this change for what it 
really represents. And that any sensible distro will re-enable the 
historical default for the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace keysequence.

Regards,
Gerry

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/attachments/20090328/808f1503/attachment.html