Re: GDM version used for GNOME 2.24?

["Alberto Ruiz" <aruiz gnome org>]

2008/9/4 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.

I kind of agree, but don't forget about the big amount of branded
GDM's out there based on those themes.

> * 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)

I do use it, for more reasons than just switching ugly themes. I think
you're oversimplifying how big the regresion is here.

In terminal server deployments, the gdm configuration is not trivial
to setup, it usually requires tweaking the text file directly to get
where you want. I consider having  no migration path and no UI tool a
huge regression.

> * 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.



-- 
Un saludo,
Alberto Ruiz