Quite a while back this whole rootless thing came out. My research led me to avoid it. Now pacman wants me to go xorg-rootless. Anyone care to share some insight while I research more?

System updated. I trusted the rootless bs because it came from obarun. I have no key or mouse. I'm using my laptop. I'm asking for help. I've been out for over a year and have no idea what transpired. Anyone care to give me some updates?

  • cdop replied to this.

    Update. Rootless was useless. had to force install the standard xorg setup. System fun again.
    --edit: can't mark as solved. I liked the old forum better.

      This earlier thread details the same or a similar issue with xorg-server-rootless and XFCE. You can ignore the offending packages in pacman.conf as Hyperspace ended up doing if you wish. It is confusing that pacman tries to swap xorg to rootless when both versions continue to be supported; I don't know why that happens or if it's intended.

      I'm using KDE Plasma and luckily had no issue on my laptop or desktop switching to the rootless version.

      • eric replied to this.

        i'll just put this link here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#Rootless_Xorg
        i have yet to understand what i need to do in order to make it work on my setup and am currently ignoring these packages.
        seems the pacman package swap behavior reappeared with the recent repository changes..

        eilenbeb --edit: can't mark as solved. I liked the old forum better.

        as the OP, you should be able to see a small dropdown arrow on the "reply" button, top right, click there, choose "rename" to rename the thread title. (and optionally add tags)

        you should have not problem anymore with the xorg-server-rootless trying to replace the xorg-server package.
        Simply, synchronize pacman db again.

        advesperascit I don't know why that happens or if it's intended.

        not intended, just a mistake from my side.

        eilenbeb I have no key or mouse

        first, for a functional xorg setup you need at least a video driver and an input driver:

        local/xf86-input-libinput 1.4.0-1 (xorg-drivers)
            Generic input driver for the X.Org server based on libinput
        local/xf86-video-amdgpu 23.0.0-1 (xorg-drivers)
            X.org amdgpu video driver

        If I recall correctly I had to remove xf86-input-evdev and install xf86-input-libinput for my rootless xorg to work. Didn't check why evdev doesn't work with rootless.

        Now if you have consolekit or seatd you should be set. But if like me you don't, you must also make sure that your user is in the video and input groups:

        $ groups
        lp video audio scanner input

        Without the video group, xorg won't even start, and without the input group, your keyboard and mouse won't work (which might be what you're experiencing).

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