ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.6.0.2 (stable), the "Exam time" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

EKI FOO EKI FOO EEEEEEEE BAKA BAKA WHEEEEE

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

You may have noticed that there wasn't any 2.6.0.0 nor 2.6.0.1 announcement.
Well that's because (and here you have 3 options to choose from) a) I was
busy with school, b) I was lazy or c) they were crap anyway.  This release is
likely crap in different ways.  2.6.0.1 was particaularly crappy since one
of the minor bugfixes created a major bug (the flexiserver stuff broke).

In any case, I'm about to take my qualification exams and so my response time
has seriously increased (as in, I'm about as responsive as a flattened frog).
I should set up an autoresponder and whenever I get a mail with 'gdm' in the
subject, it should respond with: "Pffffft!  Piss off!"  However I'm not as
polite and thus I don't respond at all.

This release has some major bugfixes especially some long pending PAM fixes
and basically I integrated a bunch of patches from bugzilla.  Also the IPv6
support is now off by default since it's still not as reliable as the IPv4
code, and really, if you need IPv6 for your private lab of X terminals, there
is something wrong with your head.  It does make for a good buzzphrase
however: "IPv6 enabled!"

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:
=====

Some of the highlights of 2.6.0.x over 2.4.4.x

(I won't mention specific things to 2.6.0.2, go read the NEWS file)

- The login sound stuff is configurable

- flexiserver improvements, especially in the UI

- Accessibility work, including possibility to set themes from the
  standard greeter

- Optional info message on login (like motd or something like that)

- Improvements to the SUP socket protocol

- IPv6 support (must be enabled with --enable-ipv6=yes)

- Use GtkFileChooser (yay)

- Mucho fixes and some further security paranoia

- Many translation updates

- Translated docs from the sun guys

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.  It will however save backups
with the .orig extension first.

#ifndef GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED
Note3:  Note3 has been depracated ...
#endif /* GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED */

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

Webpage: http://www.jirka.org/gdm.html
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.6/
ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/

I built an RPM this time around BTW.  Have fun.  A spec file is included
so you can also try:

  rpmbuild -ta gdm-whatever.tar.gz

Have fun (or whatever else you wish to be having),

George

PS:  Note for Ankh: I'm wearing non-white socks.  In fact both striped and of
different color (red-yellow and blue-green).  I thought I'd mention that, I
think it will make Ankh happy.  No other silliness is scheduled until after
the qualification exams are done.

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest
   tree in the forest... with... a herring!
                       -- The Knights Who Say 'Ni'