GDM Greeter

Matthias Clasen mclasen at redhat.com
Mon Apr 28 21:16:23 UTC 2008


On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 16:27 -0400, Christopher L Tubbs II wrote:

> 
> >> 2) I can't seem to configure my "face" image. Putting a ".face" graphic 
> >> in my home directory doesn't work, nor does configuring image with 
> >> System->Preferences->Personal->About Me.
> > 
> > What permissions do you have on your home directory ? 
> 
> The default, created by system-config-users: drwx------
> And, .face has: -rw-r--r--
> 
> This might not be correct for use with gdm, but at the very least, 
> configuring with "About Me" utility should just work by default by 
> setting the right permissions or prompting if permissions are not correct?

Possibly. Although the 'bad surprise' factor is pretty big if some
random capplet starts messing with your home direcory. It might be
better to store the faces somewhere else.

> 
> 1. For one, it would be nice to disable faces. Sometimes it's okay, and 
> sometimes it's just annoying.
>
> 2. It would also be nice to be able to choose how usernames are selected 
> to appear in the list (even Windows can do this with TweakUI), whether 
> by UID range (i.e. > 500 or whatever), or specified list. (A good 
> configuration utility might have two columns, one column of available 
> names and one column of selected names, with arrows between to add 
> remove available names to/from selected names for listing).

The idea with the user list is to populate it dynamically with only the
users which have logged in before. As a compromise for existing systems,
we have made it show all local users, which is what brings your test
users into the list. Maybe we need a way to mark users as
don't-show-in-user-list.

> 3. The animation speed between clicking on username, and typing in 
> password should be configurable (down to zero, so there is no delay). 
> The login screen is for logging in, not for show, and the animation may 
> be okay for some people, but most of us just want to login, and that 
> means typing password immediately without waiting for animation.

Here's a trick:

cat "gtk-enable-animations=0" > /var/lib/gdm/.gtkrc-2.0

turns off the animation.

> 
> 4. There should be an option to display or not display date/time, 
> accessibility options, session options, and to configure the list of 
> available sessions.

I don't think there is a big chance that we're going to add a ton of
hide-or-show-this-or-that-ui-element knobs. One central idea with the
simple greeter was to make it adapt instead of adding such knobs. 

Eg. for the session combo, if you don't want to see it, just make sure
you only have one desktop environment installed, then it won't show up.
Or, less radical, remove all but one desktop file from
/usr/share/xsessions/.

On the flip side, the new gdm should hopefully make it easier to write
alternative greeters, so that we don't have to shoehorn every possible
login scenario into a single greeter. One example to keep an eye on is 
http://macslow.thepimp.net/?p=163


> 5. How about configuring the background or theme? with preview?

Yes, configuring the background will be possible, it just didn't happen
in time for F9. I implemented this last weekend, actually.
 






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