Lightweight display manager

[Tim Tassonis]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 17:24:52 +0300
Ondrej Mihalyi <mihalyi at matfyz.cz> wrote:

> Only my two cents:
> 
> If you don't know, how difficult is to program such complex thing as
login manager, don't ask for a custom one if there is already a good
choice (I mean gdm, what is wrong about it ? )

There is no good choice, sadly. Try looking out for display managers on
freshmeat, you won't find much.

If you ask "What's wrong with gdm?", you might as well ask, "Why XFce4,
what's wrong with Gnome?"

Some people (definitely including me) think Gnome is too bloated and the
same goes for Gdm, being dependent on all the Gnome libraries. I prefer to run
a system without a single Gnome or KDE/Qt library installed.

The downside with xdm for me is that it doesn't allow you to
shutdown/reboot the computer, so I'd really welcome the implemetation of
a new Display Manager.

Btw I don't think writing a display manager is all that hard, it depends
on the features you include. If you add face browsers, remote logins, multiple
session selection and all, it will get hairy of course, but for a start
it would be great to have a display manager featuring:

- The ability for local logins (using PAM)
- Calling .xsession in the user's home or the global xinitrc
- The possiblity to shutdown/halt if running on a local display

Then, features like remote logins might be added if the need is there.

> 
> Second, if you want to have a really lightwight display manager and
want remove gdm, try adding command line
> if [ x"$DISPLAY" = x ]; then startxfce4; fi
>  into your .bashrc :)

If you don't know what a display manager is...


> 
> I'm not XFCE developer but requests of this kind just irritate me.


It wasn't a request but an offer for help, as I read it. If that
irritates you...

Tim

> 
> Ondrej
> 
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:03:10 -0300
> Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lookkas at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi guys
> > 
> > I'm new to the list, and I was thinking about this for a long time.
I
> > apoplogize in advance if this is not the right place where to post
> > this.
> > 
> > I was wondering if it's not possible to write a small and fast
display
> > manager for Xfce, with contemplates all the essential funcionality
> > that a DM should have (login, session, shut down, etc.). I'm not
sure
> > if GDM does well in this respect, tough I use it on my toshiba
portege
> > 3010CT (pI 266 MMX, 64 Mb RAM). Maybe it can be done better.
> > 
> > Of course, I don't know if there's an actual developers interest in
> > writing such a thing (unfortunately I don't have the skills to do
that
> > right now).
> > 
> > If this was previously discussed (I didn't find anything on the
> > archives), point this to me (nicely) and simply ignore this message.
> > 
> > Thank you for the attention
> > 
> > -- 
> > ==============================
> > Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues
> > trabalho: LPDTA/FEQ/Unicamp
> > e-mail  : lookkas AT gmail DOT com
> > e-mail  : lucas AT feq DOT unicamp DOT br
> > jabber  : lookkas AT jabber DOT org
> > ICQ #   : 301 084 703
> > yahoo   : lmeneghelrodrigues AT yahoo DOT com DOT br
> > MSN    : joaozinhodomorro AT hotmail DOT com
> > ==============================
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xfce4-dev mailing list
> > Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> > http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
> > 
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce4-dev mailing list
> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev