I read this thread with interest, and can tell you one reason why I often login as root using gdm. I recently got a machine with gdm installed, and began shutting down in my usual way by su root shutdown -h now
This had the result that gnome was saving every application that was open, and opening it and more when I restarted. Before too long I had 180 open rxvt windows at startup. I finally figured out that if I close every window, use the gnome panel to log out, log in as root, then shutdown, I only get a few applications opening up at startup. I would gladly like to avoid logging in as root in gdm, but this is the only way I've been able to avoid hundreds of open windows at startup. Is there an easier way? (As you can tell, I'm new to gdm). Ric
