ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.4.0.7, the "Buy one get one free" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(If you have no clue what gdm is, skip a few paragraphs down first)

What?  What?  What?  You want to tell me two releases came out within two
days and there weren't even showstopper bugs?  Yes, that's true!  2.4.0.6
is a good release, but 2.4.0.7 is even better (though you can use 2.4.0.6
if you really REALLY want to).

OK what's new is that a whole bunch of reported bugs are now fixed.  Mostly
minor things.  There are some new features too!  One is the fact that you
now have mnemonics in the graphical greeter so you can use a keyboard to
do stuff.  Yay!

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

GDM is the GNOME Display Manager, it is the little proggie that runs in the
background, runs your X sessions, presents you with a login box and then
tells you to piss off because you forgot your password.  It does pretty much
everything that you would want to use xdm for, but doesn't involve as much
crack.  It doesn't use any code from xdm, and has a more paranoid and safer
design overall.  It also includes many features over xdm, the biggest one of
which is that it is more user friendly, even if your X setup is failing.  The
goal is that users should never, ever have to use the command line to
customize or troubleshoot gdm.  It of course supports xdmcp, and in fact
extends xdmcp a little bit in places where I thought xdm was lacking (but is
still compatible with xdm's xdmcp).

News:
=====

Highlights of 2.4.0.6 and 2.4.0.7:

2.4.0.7 stuff:

- The graphical greeter has mnemonics so that you can use the keyboard to
  log in!

- Don't run BackgroundProgram unless BackgroundType=0.  You can get the
  original behaviour with RunBackgroundProgramAlways=true.  This is to
  fix the redhat setup to be 'saner'

- The Xterm failsafe session runs the xterm in the lower right hand corner.
  I just hope that redhat uses this session as it does cooler things then
  the Xsession failsafe which sucks ass.

- A bunch of scattered minor fixes

- Add redhat-config-xfree86 to the XKeepsCrashing script (Havoc)

2.4.0.6 stuff:

- Stop using stdio in the slave to communicate with the greeter (greeters
  still use stdio).  This "may" fix the FreeBSD /dev/ttys issue.  Plus it's
  a nicer way to do it.

- Read and honour the gtkrc setting in the graphical greeter, fixes #90003

- Add a DIRTY_SERVERS and SOFT_RESTART_SERVERS fifo commands which will
  make gdm restart all the X servers next time it wants to reinit (such as
  when a user logs out) or as soon as possible (in case of SOFT_RESTART_SERVERS)
  (See doc in daemon/gdm.h, look for the GDM_SOP_)
  Useful for changing X configuration.
  You can do "(echo;echo DIRTY_SERVERS) > /var/gdm/.gdmfifo" (Given that
  ServAuthDir is /var/gdm).  This is a possible solution to issues
  such as in redhat bug 70072

- Only set GDM_LANG if a language different from the system default was
  selected 

- In Gnome and Xsession sessions, ensure that the language is set properly
  fixes #89970

- Fix crasher bug on closing the gdmsetup window, and fix applying changes
  that happened before the writing timeout

- Clear the initial message even on further tries to log in, fixes redhat bug
  70991

- When starting Xnest give it the current font path.  Should fix #89308

- make the gdmXnest link relative

- Gnome and Xsession scripts no longer read in the xdm resources, I was
  told this is bad

- Fix some RTL issues with the language lists

- Ignore up/down/tab in the graphical greeter just like in the standard one,
  focus doesn't work right here anyway

- Translation updates (Dmitry G. Mastrukov, Andras Timar, UHU Linux team,
  Manuel Borchers, Christian Neumair, Tőivo Leedjärv, Duarte Loreto,
  Stanislav Brabec, Michal Bukovjan, Gustavo Noronha Silva, Peteris Krisjanis,
  Akira TAGOH)

Note:  GDM2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
has for a while now been maintained by the Queen of England.  She is usually
not responsive to bug reports or feature requests.  You can try to send them
to me however.

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.

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

http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/2.0.0/sources/gdm/

Sorry no RPMS.  There is a spec file included in the tarball and it may or may
not work (it should, and it did some time ago but I haven't tried it lately).

Have fun,

George

PS:  You'd think I'd make up two different PS notes if I have two diffrent
releases, right?

PS2:  HEY!  That's cheating, the first PS was too short!  HA!

PS3:  The PS writing person has been sacked.  We have hired a moose to finish
this announcement.

PS4:  Mooses (moosen? meese? what the hell is the plural) can't write.  The
moose has been sacked.  No lammas here either.  You just have to do without
further PSs (PSen?)

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, 
   but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.
                       -- Winston Churchill