ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.4.0.8, the "It's the cheese!" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

GEORGEISAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANKER

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

I think I should get back to announcing releases when they are released
rather then a bit later.  I could announce releases before they are done as
well.  Then I could exadurate what the software does (will do that is), and
drive competition out of bussiness.  This will make me wear large glasses and
I will never wash my hair again.  I will run a large monopolistic
corporation, I will develop a very evil laugh and I will roast small babies
on a bonfire.  Oh wait ... someone already did all that ... DAMNIT!  (Hmmm
... tastes like chicken ...)

In any case, here's an actually released release, as in one that has been
released when the release anouncement has been released.  I have actually
tested another few percent of the million and one possibilities of gdm
use and found a few more bugs that needed fixing.  You wonder why gdm can't
just be this simple program that just logs you in?  HA!  That would
be too simple!  (I'm starting to develop my evil laugh):  Muhahahahaha!

The thing that most people will notice is a new icon and logo (if you don't
notice it, I'll kick your ass).  I actually drew a different icon first, but
my girlfriend said it was butt ugly and so I had to draw a different one.

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 2.4.0.8:

- New script to aid in testing graphical greeter themes, gdmthemetester.
  It will run Xnest with gdmgreeter in debug mode with the specified theme
  and under the specified environment.  Run it to get help.

- No longer 'asks twice' in graphical login to halt, reboot or suspend
  Fixes #90971

- When restarting the greeter from the setup dialog the setup dialog will go
  insensitive and force a busy cursor on itself.

- New icon!  And new logo.  The new icon is now girlfriend approved (she said
  it's not as bad as my first attempt to draw one, so I suppose that means
  it's ok).  Not that I did ALL the drawing, I borrowed the gnome-term icon
  and worked on that :)

- The focus stuff in both greeters is done in a nicer way.  Also the graphical
  greeter has a "menubar" (invisible).  You can activate it with F10 like any
  other menubar.  This all should make both greeters even more accessibility
  friendly.

- The Init/PreSession/PostSession directories can now also include Flexi,
  and XDMCP scripts which will be run in case the server is flexi or XDMCP.
  Also you can specify a <hostname> script to run for specific hosts.

- You can now setup the daemon to log in certain local (not logging in
  through xdmcp) users without a password, Just set the
  daemon/LocalNoPasswordUsers to a list of comma separated names.
  Fixes #51908

- The daemon is fixed so that if pam asks questions during autologin, they
  will actually get asked.

- gdmphotosetup no longer hangs on "Browse".  Fixes #90613
  
- Busy cursor will never get stuck on autologin

- Wait 2 seconds beween killing local servers on daemon restart or stop.  This
  prevents a hung keyboard on my box.

- Xnest keyboard stuff solved in a better way.  Remove the -kb fromt he command
  line so that Xnest understands XKB, and then in the Init script migrate
  keyboard configuration.  Also read capslock state from the parent server
  in the greeter.

- Close the 0,1,2 descriptors in the gdmXnestchooser so that things like
  "`gdmXnest -b`" shell things to get the display number work.

- gdmXnestchooser acts more nicely on being killed

- Config file is updated and includes more "documentation" comments

- If you haven't changed the config then if you are using the tarball install,
  the config will be overwritten with the one from the tarball.

- An incredible "sleep(1)" hack to fix race on server reinit

- A whole bunch of random small fixes, and changes.

- Translation updates (He Qiangqiang, Wang Li, Marius Andreiana,
  Yukihiro Nakai)

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/2.0.1/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: Wheee!  Our pufferfish IS very aggressive (as he should be) after all.
We have bought two more mollies (stupid fish, but the only fish that
sometimes work with brackish puffers) so that the mollies would squabble
amongst themselves rather then bother the puffer all the time.  It seemed ok
for a bit and then we left them, only for a few hours, alone, and well ...
One of the fish went to fish haven (toilet) and the other one is in the other
tank now.  That is not all of her, large parts of her fins and other places
are in the puffer.  I have a lot more respect for our black molly that stays
with the puffer now.  She's got COJONES!

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
                       -- Albert Einstein