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Login display managers, any reason to change from gdm?

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 12:52 am
by mint123
I have been reading about LightDM. Ubuntu and Debian use it as their default. GDM3 is default in LMDE xfce. Would there be a benefit to changing?

I looked at LMDE in Virtualbox with gdm3 and lightdm. Lightdm takes 3.9 megabites of memory and gdm takes about 10.5. Both can do auto login and Lightdm is independent of desktop enviroment. I have seen this site which hints there is some inferior power settings for Lightdm. They mention power saving when a laptop lid is closed. But xfce power manager would command this, not the display manager correct?
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/2414.html

Other than a tiny amount of memory would there be any other advantages?

Re: Login display managers, any reason to change from gdm?

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:30 am
by mint123
Webkit isn't necessary to use LightDM. I read there are some concerns about Webkit having a process with root access which could be a security concern. All you really need to use Light DM is the main package and the gtk-greeter. Then you can change the .config file to whatever theme you want. Anyone else using it and have something to add?

Re: Login display managers, any reason to change from gdm?

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 6:29 am
by Brian49
I tried LightDM, but couldn't get autologin to work no matter what I did. This is a known issue.

I switched from the default gdm3 to legacy gdm, mainly because it comes with gdmsetup, which enables you to set all your login preferences via a GUI.

Re: Login display managers, any reason to change from gdm?

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:54 pm
by mint123
I have it in a xfce Mint Debian virtual machine. I got this to work fine for me for autologin.
http://siripong-computer-tips.blogspot. ... heezy.html

to autologin, Lightdm needs 2 files in /etc/pam.d
there will be /etc/pam.d/lightdm ther already from the install, but you must create the lightdm-autologin file and fill it with what the link above says. I tried to condense these into just one file, but didn't get that to work.

In this Arch link it says LightDM greeter starts with root privliges. That doesn't seem ideal. Person wrote a patch for it, i wonder if it's in the release?
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php? ... mments=all

The comment is dated 13 Feb.