For a while I’ve been encountering a bug on Ubuntu, where gdm fails to start. After starting up the PC, right where I expect to see gdm’s list of login users, the whole screen is black with a GUI cursor that I can control with the mouse, but there is nothing to click. The fix is Ctrl+Alt+F2 and continue from the console.
The annoying thing about this bug is that it happens sporadically, so it’s difficulty to debug. I’ve tried various fixes across the last couple months but nothing seems to work permanently.
I know the quickest fix is to just stop using gdm, or try another display manager, but since I have time on my hands right now, I thought it would be fun to try installing a brand new Linux distribution. I went with Debian.
I opted for the minimal Debian image, the one which requires a working internet connection during the installation phase. At some point during the install, it prompts you for which subset of software to install. I selected none of those (I even unchecked “Standard system utilities”) and I ended up with a working Debian installation.
After installing X and AwesomeWM, the window opacity setting was not cooperating. Translucent windows such as my terminal emulator were rendering as fully opaque. Picom was misbehaving.
Nothing I tried worked in the evening yesterday, but this morning I opened a
terminal window, ran picom --backend xrender, and opened another terminal
window. That other terminal window was rendered properly. And that was all I
needed to see. I integrated this into my AwesomeWM config, and all was well.
I followed this GitHub gist and installed Noto Color Emoji.
I installed ALSA and PulseAudio with apt install alsa-utils pulseaudio. To be
honest I’m unsure which one is responsible for the audio eventually working. Do
note that I use a Scarlett Scarlett.
That was pretty fun. Bye Ubuntu.