Lightweight display manager for xfce?

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

On ven., 2011-05-27 at 21:37 -0700, Auke Kok wrote:
> On 05/26/2011 11:07 PM, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > On jeu., 2011-05-26 at 20:22 -0700, Auke Kok wrote:
> >>
> >> if you always login to the same user, try uxlaunch - a `login-less`
> >> login manager. uxlaunch supports consolekit/pam and that's what is
> >> needed to get your xfce logout/shutdown buttons to work on most
> >> distro's.
> >>
> >> http://meego.gitorious.org/meego-os-base/uxlaunch
> >
> > Note that I've quickly tried uxlaunch on my Debian. It might be related
> > to some integration lacking, but it failed to use consolekit properly.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > All in all, it was seducing even for a desktop box if only one user, but
> > it's not usable for me.
> 
> I'm paid by Intel to write/maintain uxlaunch for MeeGo.

That's quite nice from them :)
> 
> I'm obviously willing to merge patches from people who care about 
> uxlaunch for one or more of the following:
> 
> - non-MeeGo distributions
> - non-Intel hardware support (e.g. ARM, sparc, etc.)
> 
> But, you can imagine that it's outside of my current work to spend too 
> much time on debian integration. (as a matter of fact, the last time I 
> ever installed a debian system is over 7 years ago).

Yeah, and as a matter of fact, we have Debian maintainers willing to
accept bug reports and whose job is exactly to take care of the
integration :)
> 
> Now, that said:
> 
>  > Another issue is that uxlaunch will try to run stuff
>  > in /etc/xdg/autostart and .config/autostart (even when hidden=true)
>  > while xfce4-session already takes care of that, and I don't think you
>  > can disable that behavior in either of them.
> 
> This was fixed in uxlaunch's git yesterday.

Cool :)
> 
>  > Note that I've quickly tried uxlaunch on my Debian. It might be related
>  > to some integration lacking, but it failed to use consolekit properly.
>  >
>  > When running directly startxfce4 or xfce4-session, it won't start the
>  > consolekit daemons.
> 
> console-kit-daemon needs to be running before uxlaunch starts. It's up 
> to the ConsoleKit packager to assure it's running before uxlaunch starts.
> 
> of course, systemd should start it on-demand for you if you're lucky 
> enough to use that.

Well, I don't know about systemd (and frankly the first impression I
have is “scary”). I'm not too sure why consolekit would have to be run
before uxlaunch though. uxlaunch by itself doesn't need any permissions
so only stuff launched by it require it. Or am I mistaken?

Right now, if consolekit is launched by uxlaunch before startxfce4, the
issue is the same as with slim (before patch) and xdm, the session is
marked as non local.
> 
>  > When using the (debian specific) /etc/X11/Xsession (which runs scripts
>  > in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ like the consolekit one, then startxfce4),
>  > consolekit is started but the session is *not* marked as local (same
>  > thing as slim or xdm for example). Note that libpam-ck-connector *is*
>  > installed.
> 
> xsession.d is a rather obsolete (cough, you may disagree) way of 
> starting stuff. In the future, pretty much all shell code will be 
> extinct and with X11 going away in favor of things like wayland, there's 
> really no reason for me to support xsession.d script fu when desktop 
> files are all you need (and even those may just become obsolete...)

Note that, afacit, /etc/X11/Xsession.d is a Debian-specific thing
anyway. I just noted that as a reference, I'm not too sure how other
people do, but the point was to start consolekit before Xfce and share
the environment variables.

systemd might be a solution for you (MeeGo) but the Linux-only thing
means it will really cause problems for people interested in other stuff
(wether Debian because of kFreeBSD or Xfce)
> 
> Now, that probably pisses off some debian people who claim they really 
> really need it, but, uxlaunch isn't for those type of desktop users 
> anyway ;)

Yeah, I came to that conclusion too.
> 
> Anyway, I realize that uxlaunch probably doesn't work for every one or 
> every distro (especially those that build heavily on 20-year old 
> desktop-isms).

> 
> People that use uxlaunch include:
> 
> - fedora's meego UX is started with uxlaunch
> - XBMC developers are using it to start xbmc on IPTV boxes
> - obviously meego
> 
> If you have time, you know where to send patches ;)

Noted (though I might report to Debian packagers for Debian-specific
stuff)

Regards,
-- 
Yves-Alexis
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