In case anyone is interested I have some news about the problems I reported
relating to fedora 27 and the Stonebook mini (re-badged Clevo W515LU).
It turns out that the loss of use of laptop keyboard and mousepad at boot,
and after timeouts in graphic mode had nothing to do with Wayland vs X.
After I posted a bug report here
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1551373
a redhat developer identified this as a kernel problem, and asked for more
information, which I have provided.
(It seems that he added 20 redhat developers to the CC list, so I expect
there will be some progress. None of my research papers get that many
readers so soon...)
I also found that despite the use of systemd the /etc/rc.d mechanism can
still be used. So I've used that to invoke suspend just before boot, which
reduces the hassle of getting a working keyboard and mousepad at boot.
I.e. instead of shutting lid after boot prompt, then waiting for suspend
light, then opening lid, I just have to press the power button to exit from
suspend and everything works.
However, the annoying timeout if keyboard or mousepad is not used for 20
minutes remains. (This doesn't affect external keyboard or mouse,
connected via usb.)
I hope the kernel developers manage to restore the functionality that was
lost (on my machine) after kernel 4.8.6-300. Since it's a kernel problem it
looks as if switching to a different linux won't help. I can go back to
fedora25 to avoid the problem but that has inferior graphical performance
on this tiny laptop:
Intel. Celeron N3160 Processor (4cpu)
Processor Base Frequency 1.60 GHz Burst Frequency 2.24 GHz
Cache 2 MB L2
Regarding my query about alternatives to gnome-control-center:
these items in .ctwmrc now allow me to use buttons F3, F6, F7 to function
as mute, vol down, vol up, matching the blue button labels:
"F3" = : all : ! "pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ 0 &"
"F5" = : all : ! "pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -20% &"
"F6" = : all : ! "pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +10% &"
This mechanism does not require the use of Fn key, which is useful.
I never managed to get ALSA (recommended by Steve) to provide that
functionality, though I haven't tried recently.
I've set wifi to start automatically so I no longer need the gnome
tool for that. Other wifi controls use wpa-start and nmcli, invoked
from ctwm menus, or used on command line.
I've not yet tried dmenu, though it looks useful. If anyone has
a sample .ctwmrc set up to use dmenu that could be helpful.
Being lazy, I find copy + edit much quicker than read + compose!
Thanks.
Aaron
