ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.3.90.2, the "Must reserve some love for GDM" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMERANG

(Note for those that don't want to read further: if you want a stable
 gdm, use the 2.2.5.5 version)

Yay, it has been a few months since I last ran distcheck on this pile of
stinking dung^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbeautiful piece of code.  It seems it's
been mostly others that have done stuff on gdm lately too.  Oh well.  Here
goes a new set of randomly flipped bits for you to play with.

The new greeter is in courtesy of the Red Hat guys (Alex mostly), though it's
still not the default as it still has a few issues and missing features and
such minor bits.  Some of the i18n stuff has been figured out as well.  The
configurator is still broken and I've decided it will die soon.  I'm working
on a new one which should be done by the time 2.4 of gdm hits the streets.
It's just a big mess right now anyway.  I got a simpler one in mind and I've
got quite a good start on it already, check out gdmsetup and gaze in amazement
at all the widgets with unconnected signals.  The coolest thing will be that
it will automatically update stuff on the fly rather then having to restart
gdm.

So this is an UNSTABLE release, using UNSTABLE libraries, and of course
there are no rpms.  Use 2.2.5.5 if you want something that pretends to
be stable.

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

Ahh, so you have no clue what gdm is?  Well if you've read this far ... let's
not get into that.  Gdm is GNOME Display Manager, the little daemon that lets
you log in to your computer.  It allows xdmcp multiple login displays,
selection of languages, multiple login sessions and generally is much cooler
then any xdm clone out there, mostly cuz it isn't an xdm clone to begin with.
I mean heck, it's even got a graphical configurator, so you don't have to use
the command line to hose your system anymore.

News:
=====

Highlights of 2.3.90.2:

- LOTS of new greeter work (Alex, Jonathan)

- Some internal reordering, and preparing for on-the-fly configuration updates
  for some keys

- Start of a new configurator.  One without crack (George's definition of
  what's crack applies).  It doesn't actually work yet.  But then again
  gdmconfig doesn't work either.

- Some UI/String Fixes #77151, #73817 and others (Benedikt Roth,
  Gaute Lindkvist, Karsten Weiss, Abel Cheung, Havoc)

- Correct handling of signal blocking.  We just unblock everything before
  running a child regardless of how we were started.

- Some leaks plugged

- Ability to have a different greeter for remote connections

- Install .desktop files appropriately (Seth)

- Estonian entries added (Tőivo Leedjärv)

- Fix some localization stuff.  Use translated strings on the console only
  if we can verify that it's UTF8

- Build fixes (Jacob, Alex, Gediminas Paulauskas)

- Updates from the 2.2 branch (Kjartan Maraas, Pablo Saratxaga, Karsten Weiss,
  me)

- Translation updates (Vincent van Adrighem, Ole Laursen, Changwoo Ryu,
  Ole Laursen, Tőivo Leedjärv, Zbigniew Chyla, Duarte Loreto, Christian Rose,
  Stanislav Visnovsky, Jarkko Ranta, Hasbullah Bin Pit, Khairulanuar Abd Majid,
  Kjartan Maraas, Christian Rose, Wang Jian, Wang Li, Valek Filippov, 
  Carlos Perello Marin, Lucas 'Basurero' Vieites, Stanislav Brabec,
  Abel Cheung)

Note:  Gdm2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
is now maintained by the Queen of England.  Although when she's not answering
her email I usually cover for her.

Note2:  If installing from the tarball do note that make install overwrites
most of the setup files, all except gdm.conf and gnomerc.  It will however
save backups with the .orig extension first.

Note3:  Distributors, packagers.  Please, PLEASE use the standard Gnome script
when setting things up as gnome, or at least equivalently working scripts.  It
should never be OK to just exec gnome-session, that is considered bad form.
The script needs to read (if available) the ~/.gnomerc and otherwise read
the <sysconfdir>/gdm/gnomerc file.  This allows users and administrators to
setup custom startup for gnome.

Note4:  Distributors, packagers.  PLEASE DO NOT PACKAGE AND DISTRIBUTE THIS
VERSION AS STABLE SOFTWARE.  It's not stable.  It's broken.  And it
runs as root.  You get the idea.

Downloading:
============

http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/pre-gnome2/sources/gdm/

Have fun,

George

PS:  Ever since I "got a life", I now need to find other motivations for
hacking on GNOME besides the "to get chicks" one.  Though I must admit I never
did get a date by virtue of being a GNOME hacker.  I've been toying with the
idea of doing it for the good of the world, but then I think of all the
horrible hacks I've inflicted upon unsuspecting users and that whole argument
falls apart.  I can't say I do it for money either.  But then again I'm
studying pure math, so I can't really be that much of a "money oriented"
person.  I also don't really do it for the ego trip.  I already have an ego
that I can't make any larger, plus if I wanted an ego trip, I'd start my own
new OS and call it Vicioux.  Maybe I should do that ... hmmm ...

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
   relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
                       -- Richard P. Feynman