On 13 May 2011 15:19, Miguel de Icaza <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > >> Why replace GDM? > > What user-facing problem does this solve?
The main advantage I see to GNOME is to reduce the amount of GNOME specific code that needs to be maintained. In terms of users, the ability to implement a greeter design is the useful aspect. > In general, GDM code is ugly not because of what it does, but to > prevent a wide range of security attacks that are attempted against > login managers. > > Writing a login manager is not difficult, hardening one is. > > May I suggest that before this is considered, a security team performs > an audit of all the security exploits that have been attempted against > GDM, XDM and KDM and ensure that none of those can be exploited with > the current code base. Absolutely > Additionally, we should compare the bug list from GDM and make sure > that features that were implemented are not dropped, and that bugs > that were fixed continued to be fixed here. This just be just to > prevent another case of CADT [1]. Also agree. > > Miguel > > [1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html > > >> >> - LightDM is a cross-platform solution. Ubuntu is planning to switch >> to it this cycle, and other distributions have expressed interest in >> the project. By sharing this piece of infrastructure GNOME can spend >> more time working on important GNOME components. LightDM is aligned >> with freedesktop.org. >> >> - I am confident that the LightDM architecture is simpler than GDM. >> Some indicators of this: >> - Smaller code size >> - Well defined interface between greeter and session >> - Less dependencies >> - Less internal interfaces >> Architecture can be a personal opinion, and I encourage those with >> programming experience to look at the code and decide for themselves. >> Note that LightDM is not lighter in features, but in architecture. >> >> - By having a well defined interface between the greeter and daemon, >> it is significantly easier to develop a greeter without knowledge of >> how display management works. This is useful as the skillset and >> motivations of these two sets of developers are different. >> >> - LightDM is a platform for future work and is investigating the use >> of new technologies like Wayland. >> >> The details: >> Purpose: Cross-desktop display manager >> Target: desktop >> Dependencies: libglib, libpam, libxdmcp, libxcb, libxklavier, >> gobject-introspection, libgtk+ >> Resource Usage: Launchpad for source control and bug tracking [1], >> tarballs in public ftp [3] (in process of moving to freedesktop.org) >> Adoption: Accepted for use in Ubuntu 11.10, interest from other distributions >> GNOME-ness: Display manager is cross-desktop, example GTK+ greeter is >> fully GNOME compliant. I would recommend this module is maintained in >> the GNOME servers to get all the build and translation support. >> 3.0 readiness: GTK greeter currently using GTK2, but all other code >> uses latest GNOME standards. >> License: GPL3 >> >> [1] https://launchpad.net/lightdm >> [2] >> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-October/msg00226.html >> [3] http://people.ubuntu.com/~robert-ancell/lightdm/releases/ >> _______________________________________________ >> desktop-devel-list mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list >> > _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
