Re: [gdm-list] Turn off user list in greeter

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Ray:

> > > FWIW, it would probably be pretty simple to take the old gdmsetup code
> > > and revamp it to just operate on gconf instead of the configuration
> > > files.
> > I would love to see any proposal.
>
> I don't think it's a good idea.

When I said that I would love to see a proposal, I assumed that we
would need to hash out issues of desktop integration as a part of
the discussion.

> The party line is that we want to *integrate* gdm with the rest 
> of the desktop.  It shouldn't seem like some disjoint application 
> separate from the rest of the system.  

Agreed.  I am sure that we can come up with a better way to provide
an ability to configure the desktop than the old gdmsetup provided.
It was flawed in numerous ways.

One question that I have is should any GDM configuration program only
work well if the user is logging into a GNOME desktop environment?  If
a person uses GDM with other desktop environments, such as KDE, should
the user also be able to configure the login program?  Coming up with a
mechanism that allows the user to configure the login screen in fashion
that works well across desktops may be some work.  Or is the new GDM
really a GNOME-only login program?

> In that same vein, we shouldn't add a monolithic gdmsetup tool.  That's
> why it was removed in the first place.

I am not sure the new GDM has enough configuration options to support
a configuration tool anybody would describe as monolithic.  I do not
think it is true that it was specifically removed because of its poor
desktop integration.  I do not remember much focus on it in the rewrite
process so far.

> What we really need is to
>
> 1) get some incarnation of the patch in bug 536531 upstream, for
> setting the background
> 2) get a new user account dialog written that covers things like auto login
> 3) get the display configuration stuff halton's working on fleshed out
> and finished (i hope to spend some time helping with that next week)

Agreed, these are probably the more immediate steps that are needed.

Though, if people have an interest in improving GDM configuration, I
think additional discussion would be good to make a more concrete plan.

Brian