GDM in Karmic

Sat Jul 25 16:07:21 UTC 2009

I generally agree with what vidd said. I'm not sure whether it's good to try to modify
gdm as gnome seems to move away from modularity more and more.
I don't know enough about SLiM and xdm to really judge what's making them un/suitable,
only tried both once or twice. But I think a discussion about this could help to see how
much work it would be to make either of them suitable.

I also agree with vidd on the footprint perspective, even though I currently have no idea
what the new gdm weighs as I haven't started testing karmic yet.

Simon

On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:44:17 -0400
"vidd" <vidd at crosslink.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Cody A.W. Somerville" <cody-somerville at ubuntu.com>
> To: "Xubuntu Development Discussion"
> <xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 11:14 AM
> Subject: RFC: GDM in Karmic
> 
> 
> > Hello Folks,
> >
> > As you may or may not be aware, the developers of the
> gnome display 
> > manager
> > (GDM) began a major rewrite with version 2.21. Now at
> 2.27.x, the Ubuntu
> > development team has determined the new GDM ready for
> inclusion in Ubuntu
> > and as such uploaded this new version a few weeks ago.
> Unfortunately, the
> > new GDM heavily relies on a number of gnome desktop
> components currently
> > such as gnome-session, metacity, gnome-settings-daemon,
> etc. The reason 
> > for
> > this is because the new gdm effectively logs in as the
> gdm user, start a
> > minimal gnome environment, and launches a GTK application
> to provide a 
> > login
> > prompt.
> >
> > Luckily I've been able to patch the gdm package to
> actually start and to
> > not pull in most of gnome like it was but the experience
> is still 
> > horrible.
> > Because gnome-settings-daemon is not running, nothing is
> themed and there 
> > is
> > no background. Because metacity is not running, you don't
> have any window
> > decorations. Because gnome-session is waiting for said
> applications (this 
> > is
> > just a hypothesis) to register with it, the cursor is
> always the busy
> > cursor. Other problems include but are not limited to the
> inability to set
> > the default session (except by adding a .dmrc file to
> /etc/skel - eww), 
> > and
> > no more gdm-cdd config (it now uses gconfd).
> >
> > One possible solution is to try and use xfce4
> applications/components 
> > where
> > possible (gdm is hard coded to start gnome-session
> > --autostart=/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/ - as
> you might have
> > guessed, /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/ contains
> desktop files to 
> > be
> > used by gnome-session to launch our friends like
> gnome-settings-daemon,
> > metacity, gdm-simple-greeter or whatever). From initial
> investigations, 
> > the
> > effort could possibly involve patching gdm,
> gdm-simple-greeter,
> > xfce4-session, xfwm4, and more... which would be a lot of
> work for no
> > guarantee that we'll be able to end up with something
> we're happy with in
> > time for karmic.
> >
> > Another solution that quickly comes to mind is the use of
> another desktop
> > manager. Thus far I've evaluated slim and xdm and found
> them unsuitable.
> > Luckily, there appears there might be some other
> solutions still to be
> > investigated. If you know of anything, please send me a
> private e-mail 
> > with
> > details.
> >
> > A third solution would be to reupload the 2.20.x series
> of GDM (the gdm we
> > know and for the most part love) under a new name (such
> as gdm-2.20,
> > gdm-legacy, or something) and use that. Its the least
> amount of work and 
> > its
> > been doing the job. The biggest drawback to this is that
> the 2.20.x series
> > is no longer supported/maintained by upstream so we'll
> not be able to run 
> > to
> > gdm's developers for bug fixes and we certainly can't
> expect any new
> > features. However, I'm personally starting to feel that
> this would be the
> > best option for Karmic as all this option requires is a
> decision (which 
> > I'd
> > like to make with consensus of the team and involved
> folks from the
> > community) and we can continue to work on integrating the
> new gdm and then
> > ship it when *we're ready* to do so.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > -- 
> > Cody A.W. Somerville
> > Software Systems Release Engineer
> > Foundations Team
> > Custom Engineering Solutions Group
> > Canonical OEM Services
> > Phone: +1-781-850-2087
> > Cell: +1-506-471-8402
> > Email: cody.somerville at canonical.com
> >
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> > -- 
> > xubuntu-devel mailing list
> > xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
> >
> 
> My two cents:
>     For what it's worth, creating a gdm-legacy application
> is a good 
> stop-gap...as long as it is only a stop-gap.
>     You have stated that SLiM and xDM are not ready for
> production-grade 
> release (I agree)
> 
> Can we get a list of the shortfalls of these two window
> managers so we can 
> get them up to snuff?
> IMHO modifying the new gdm to load xfce is probably going
> to be MORE work 
> then getting SLiM production ready (and then there is the
> footprint 
> consideration)
> 
> thank you
> vidd 
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