On Thursday 24 July 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Hi, excellent people! > > Having got X11 installed and "working", I need a window manager. Why > not XFCE, as supplied on the installation disk? > > # emerge xfce didn't work - "Portage: Don't know what xfce is". > Scrabbled aroud /usr/portage, then # emerge xfce4 started working. > > Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce? Anyhow, that's a minor > point.
I don't know why, it probably the official name of the upstream project, like kde4 really is kde4 not kde. Names are arbitrary anyway. Why the name xfce? Maybe it means something, it probaly doesn't > The major point was that portage refused to install xfce because it > said that > > [blocks B ] net-print/lprng (is blocking > net-print/cups-1.3.7-r1) [blocks B ] net-print/cups (is blocking > net-print/lprng-3.8.28) > > * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot > be * installed at the same time on the same system. > > . I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print > program and put in cups instead. This is a bit of a cheek! No it doesn't mean that. It means that according to the configuration you have specified, lprng and cups must both be installed, but they cannot coexist on the same system (i.e. they block). You, the human, must now make a decision and tell portage what you want it to do, and you need to tell it in the unambiguous manner that portage expects you to tell it in. You may be quite certain that you have done this, but I assure you you have not (according to portage's rules that is) > Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon", > rather than specifically cups? For that matter, why must it install > a print daemon at all? Not every X user has a printer or wants to > print. > > What can I do about this? I really don't want to have to install > cups. We'll need lots more info to determine why portage wants to do this. Start with the output of 'emerge -avt xfce4' and post all of it back here. Meanwhile, I recommend you get out the trusty gentoo docs from gentoo.doc and read the section on blockers, as you are going to need this info. My bet is that you have the cups USE flag enabled (to enable printing) and xfce4 is hard-coded to use cups as the default print daemon. Before you ask "why is there not a choice?" - there is, it's called a virtual, but in the absense of you saying which package you want to satisfy that virtual, there must be a default. cups would be a good default choice, lprng would be an very thick choice. -- Alan McKinnon alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
