Re: GDM version used for GNOME 2.24?

["Patryk Zawadzki" <patrys pld-linux org>]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 22:27 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote:
>> So,
>>
>> the release-team normally asks on d-d-l for comments on new modules and
>> dependencies.
>> In this case I'd like to ask for valuable feedback on gdm trunk.
>>
>> Among the release-team there are different opinions whether to use trunk
>> or 2.20.x for GNOME 2.24 and hence different opinions on regressions
>> (and the definition of that term) and missing or rewritten
>> functionality.
>> As far as I know, Fedora and Foresight ship trunk, while Ubuntu and
>> Mandriva tend to ship 2.20.x. Opensuse releases in December so no real
>> use in asking them. No idea about Debian.
>>
>> Don't know if providing links to former discussion threads might
>> influence opinions. Feel free to ignore these links and to share your
>> own non-influenced experience instead:
>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2008-August/msg00021.html
>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gdm-list/2008-July/msg00028.html
>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2008-August/msg00072.html
>>
>> We'd like to have a decision made by this weekend so there's two weeks
>> left for translators. Comments highly welcome, so you can't blame
>> release-team only in the end. ;-)
> According to what I'm reading in those links, I'd say
> it's not ready yet.  No configuration migration plus
> no graphical configuration?  I mean, configuration
> migration is *most* important on the first release.
>
> We have a six-month release cycle for a reason.  Let's
> wait.  In six months, we can make a release that makes
> people say "Wow", instead of releasing now and making
> people say "WTF".

I've been using the new gdm since 2.22 and can't say that any of the
reported issues would be a blocker for me.

* The old "pretty" themes were a huge mess. From machine to machine
login inputs moved across the screen, varied in size, color and
visibility. Some themes chose to use the user list, some required you
to enter the login. Most of theme were broken in one way or another:
showing errors in black font on black background, overlapping errors
with the login or password widgets, hiding feedback from biometric
backends (the infamous "put finger" prompt when the device is ready)
etc.

* There is no GUI configuration but I personally don't know a person
who would miss the old gdmsetup binary. It was ugly and half of the
distros required you to run it manually with sudo. The settings are
there in gconf so everyone is free to come up with a configuration
tool if you find anything worth configuring there (the main reason
people needed gdmsetup was to switch from the default ugly theme to
some random other ugly theme which is now irrelevant)

* The new gdm uses gnome-session to launch necessary stuff so we get
all kind a11y tools support, power management (which is *very*
important to mobile users) and all the stuff you can think of and
write a .desktop file for.

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki