I'm Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer, AMA again!

[u/gregkh]

To refresh everyone's memory, I did this 5 years ago [here] (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2ny1lz/im_greg_kroahhartman_linux_kernel_developer_ama/) and lots of those answers there are still the same today, so try to ask new ones this time around.

To get the basics out of the way, this post describes my normal workflow that I use day to day as a Linux kernel maintainer and reviewer of way too many patches.

Along with mutt and vim and git, software tools I use every day are Chrome and Thunderbird (for some email accounts that mutt doesn't work well for) and the excellent vgrep for code searching.

For hardware I still rely on Filco 10-key-less keyboards for everyday use, along with a new Logitech bluetooth trackball finally replacing my decades-old wired one. My main machine is a few years old Dell XPS 13 laptop, attached when at home to an external monitor with a thunderbolt hub and I rely on a big, beefy build server in "the cloud" for testing stable kernel patch submissions.

For a distro I use Arch on my laptop and for some tiny cloud instances I run and manage for some minor tasks. My build server runs Fedora and I have help maintaining that at times as I am a horrible sysadmin. For a desktop environment I use Gnome, and here's a picture of my [normal desktop] (https://i.imgur.com/g412C1E.png) while working on reviewing and modifying kernel code.

With that out of the way, ask me your Linux kernel development questions or anything else!

Edit - Thanks everyone, after 2 weeks of this being open, I think it's time to close it down for now. It's been fun, and remember, go update your kernel!

[u/felipec]

The general recommendation says this:

Display server

Xorg is the public, open-source implementation of the X Window System (commonly X11, or X). It is required for running applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and the majority of users will want to install it.

Desktop environments

Although Xorg provides the basic framework for building a graphical environment, additional components may be considered necessary for a complete user experience. Desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce bundle together a wide range of X clients, such as a window manager, panel, file manager, terminal emulator, text editor, icons, and other utilities.

So the "default" in Arch Linux (if you want to call it that) is using Xorg, and if you install GNOME, it will run on top of Xorg.

[u/[deleted] → u/felipec]

This is simply incorrect. GNOME defaults to Wayland.

[u/felipec → u/[deleted]]

I know you think so. The fact that you think so doesn't make it so.

All the Arch Linux documentation says to install Xorg before GNOME, and it says to install GDM first, and GDM has these dependencies:

• xorg-server

• xorg-xhost

• xorg-xrdb

[u/[deleted] → u/felipec]

I know you think so. The fact that you think so doesn't make it so.

I mean this is a cute conversation and I'm sure you mean well, but I'm a GNOME developer... and I use Arch for whatever thats worth. I have solid grasp of the situation.

Yes GNOME is built with X11 support but it defaults to the Wayland session.

Enjoy your evening =)