Re: xscreensaver, any plan do drop it !!

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp redhat com>]

On Wed, 2005-07-06 at 12:56 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-07-06 at 07:44 -0400, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-07-06 at 10:53 +0300, regatta wrote:
> > > Hi
> > > 
> > > I know many people will not like me :) , but this just a question
> > > please don´t hate me :)
> > > 
> > > is there any plan to drop xscreensaver or at less do a heavy change on
> > > it (the ugly lock login didn´t change since I think gnome 2 or even
> > > before and always you have to reboot your machine if you lock the
> > > screen and your keyboard layout is not English when you lock the
> > > screen because you can´t change the language back to English to enter
> > > your password !!)
> > 
> > Someone needs to write a secure replacement.  Locking should be handled
> > by GDM IMO.
> 
> There's already a replacement, and it's called gnome-screensaver, and is
> in GNOME CVS right now.

Some people had some problems with it becoming a replacement.  Not sure
what they were and I haven't investigated it myself.  Has it been vetted
yet for security issues?  The biggest problem with xscreensaver type
locking is that if xscreensaver crashes your session is unlocked.  This
is why the author didn't want to link against external libraries if it
could be avoided (and why we get ugly dialog).  Replacing it with
something else doesn't really solve any problems other than making it
look better.  I think we need to get GDM to start doing the locking.
That way if it crashes the session exits.  If we do that then we can use
anything for a screensaver app.

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp redhat com>