----- Original Message ----- From: "Cody A.W. Somerville" <[email protected]> To: "Xubuntu Development Discussion" <[email protected]> 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: [email protected] > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > xubuntu-devel mailing list > [email protected] > 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Web mail provided by NuNet, Inc. The Premier National provider. http://www.nni.com/ -- xubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
