It seems that the change has inconvenienced the many at the behest of a few.

Looking at the page here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/DontZap it appears that the Accessibility features may be the root cause of the problem, and that perhaps, just perhaps, the decision to enable these features should done at install time. A simple question, perhaps accompanied by the wheel-chair logo, asking if this PC is going to be used by persons who have accessibility issues. If the answer is yes then enable the “hold-shift-key-for-8-seconds-to-enable-sticky-keys” feature, otherwise leave well-enough alone.

If I have to follow all documented changes within the Linux domain on every change, I won’t have enough time to develop our business, so I have to choose.
Do you realize how many changes are happening? Especially the last 3 years. Even the pro’s don’t read all changes. Speaking for myself, I give priority to servers and infrastructures.

It doesn’t really matter why I think about Ubuntu or this change. It matters what the best could be for the majority of the new Linux users. And if this is one of those, I’ll accept it. Even when I’m not pleased with it.

The enabling of Don’t Zap by default is one of those idiot Linux decisions one can’t comprehend, like Pulse Audio, Mono, or “ZOMG MAKE LUNIX MOAR LIEK WINDOZE LOL!” Ubuntu is guilty of enabling most of these. (Not the Don’t Zap, though they could easily enable it by default.)

This indicates that it is not “hidden” (in the open source OS that everyone here would claim to love because of the availability of the source/configurations so that said lovers can find and tweak to their own preferences)

If it was “broken” by “screwbuntu” then why is this option “broken” in numerous distributions?

@Ruben & @Sharninder – If you’re so confident that you need a “pro mode” for linux then why were you not already aware of these documented changes?

Perhaps everyone needs to step back for a second, stop thinking their opinion is the end all be all of opinions and realize that this is exactly what makes our distribution great. The fact that in 1 google search and 1 click I found this article that explained the problem, with comments that further explain how to operate it more to my liking.

Then on top of it all if you people actually read the comments and followed the link provided by Paul it’s not disabled because the devs are big meanie heads…it’s disabled because it’s not the cleanest way to kill the session and there are better alternatives to cleanly ending a system hang. Of course I’m just an ubuntu user enjoying the “dumbed down” benifits of open source software and documentation that was freely available and changed with a little work on my side. If only I was “pro” and could just use a checkbox instead.

P.S. Still need to file problems with my two sounds cards on the Ubuntu’s LaunchPad….. 9.04 has precisely zero improvements for me.

Also things like removing alsa and implementing that ugly pulseaudio, removing xmms from the repositories and other issues, are really making me disliking Ubuntu more and more. But, I’m not an average Linux user…

And hey, what’s the matter! We’re still able to switch to another distro and let more regular users migrate to Ubuntu. And that process is going well though.

as far as I know open suse disabled that feature some time ago in one of the last releases too. another combination of suse I did use much: strg-alt-esc for getting a little skull with which you could close any application-window that didn’t react anymore. now I am using ubuntu and that combination doesn’t work here. does anyone know how to do that with ubuntu?

On second thoughts, I don’t think they’re after the small number of geeks who will find ways to do what they want anyway. They’re after the millions of regular computer users who just want to use a dumb machine that doesn’t get in their way and doesn’t ask too many questions (or gives options).

Section “ServerFlags”
Option “DontZap” “False”
EndSection