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Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

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Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#41

Post by 18pfsmt »

steevdave wrote: post #39
ez77 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are considering becoming certified?

The company I work for. We are a fairly small ODM, and while I don't want to say our name I'm not hard to find on the Internet, and I know I bragged about getting my job (I get paid to work on Linux, still can't believe my luck)

I imagine the concern on Canonical's part is that they will field a significant part of the support flood from new users. Of course, the OEM/ ODM will probably get the bulk of support traffic (with some falling on the retailer), the "pilot" from the netbook/ubuntu probably gave them insight. If they structure the deal correctly, and have an auditable way for the ODM and Canonical to determine the support costs/ unit sold that could be a way to get the deal done. Tell those business coworkers of yours to keep iterating on the deal they are presenting Canonical. I can't believe there's not an equitable way to get that deal done.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#42

Post by trafficlight »

steevdave wrote: post #23
soofaloofa wrote: post #10

I love the Ubuntu team's willingness to move the platform forward. Even if that means making controversial decisions.

I'm not quite sure how changing the login manager counts as a controversial decision unless you were meaning just the unity issue. The login manager has one main job and really shouldn't be a huge convoluted mess of code (from experience GDM is). I'm excited about this change although I've never heard of lightdm until this story.

Reading through the other comments on this post tells me that there is definitely some controversy over this.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#43

Post by azakai »

steevdave wrote: post #40
azakai wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is the path that Ubuntu should follow, replace current pieces of software with lighter and smaller solutions. I fully agree, but am not sure this is an example of that. The article says LightDM uses WebKit. Loading an entire html rendering engine for a login manager seems like overkill. I guess this explains why LightDM is smaller than GDM in code size - but is it smaller in total size when including a…

Empathy (the default IM client) uses webkit to render it's themes. It is quite likely to be a shared library. On natty, webkit is fairly hefty at 24MB but it doesn't take Empathy long to load at all. And by the time your login manager has started /usr is already mounted, assuming you are not using their default partitioning which is one huge partition.

It would be interesting to know how many users use Empathy. I don't myself, and maybe I'm not representative, but I don't think it is that many - Pidgin seems more popular among people I know.

I don't follow the /usr bit - what does mounting /usr have to do with loading or not loading WebKit?

WebKit is around 24MB, which is as you say quite hefty, but it's even worse as it depends on some other libraries - sqlite, libpng, etc.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#44

Post by drivebyacct2 »

ldng wrote: post #13
pdelgallego wrote: post #5

I think this is the path that Ubuntu should follow, replace current pieces of software with lighter and smaller solutions. You can always replace them with more advances packages through apt-get.

Unity doesn't strikes me as particularly light ... I am not sure pissing off core GNOME developers with its ever changing new directions is going to help them in the long run. On the other hand I might be proved wrong if while increase its user base Ubuntu manage to convert some of them in core durable developer. IMHO, then it's not GNOME anymore. It's a new desktop akin to XFCE as they diverge more and more. It was…

Quite frankly, who cares? I'm tired of the GNOME release plans: remove features, make GTK+ controls bulkier than ever. It's like they're trying to ensure that the same amount of stuff fits on a screen despite increased screen resolution.

I'm happy to see the role Compiz is taking on. A recent rewrite that cleaned things up, replacing more and more window management tasks, support for non-accelerated backends. I'd love to see Compiz's wallpaper plugin mature and replace nautilus for the task. (It'd also allow for the global menu to not be awkward when the wallpaper has focus and for multiple wallpapers on different workspaces). Though frankly I'd love to see nautilus die in a fire anyway.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#45

Post by ldng »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #44
ldng wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity doesn't strikes me as particularly light ... I am not sure pissing off core GNOME developers with its ever changing new directions is going to help them in the long run. On the other hand I might be proved wrong if while increase its user base Ubuntu manage to convert some of them in core durable developer. IMHO, then it's not GNOME anymore. It's a new desktop akin to XFCE as they diverge more and more. It was…

Quite frankly, who cares? I'm tired of the GNOME release plans: remove features, make GTK+ controls bulkier than ever. It's like they're trying to ensure that the same amount of stuff fits on a screen despite increased screen resolution. I'm happy to see the role Compiz is taking on. A recent rewrite that cleaned things up, replacing more and more window management tasks, support for non-accelerated backends. I'd lov…

I don't care about them drifting away. I might even understand some point they made about GNOME. What I don't appreciate it's some people in Ubuntu world (that would be community and canonical) blaming GNOME Upstream for the drift. They want to lead their own platform somewhere else, fine, just do it. Don't pretend that you've been pushed to.

The Gnome Zeitgeist project originated from the Ubuntu community and at first they weren't accepted for inclusion in the project and started to whine in a very ubuntuesque way. They weren't listening at all to the maintainer's rationale for rejection. Happily at some point they started to listen and will probably be a key piece of GNOME 3.2

Now, I can't say the same for some others projects from canonical. challenging upstream is one thing, not being open to dialogue another, pushing its agenda by FUDing another beast altogether.

As for removing features ... what are talking about ? GNOME 3.0 ? It's not like it is a finished and dead product that won't evolve anymore ! Bulkier controls ?! Come man, just change your theme. Increased screen resolution ? Like Unity wasn't made for netbooks and tablet. I'll stop feeding the troll right here ;-)

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#46

Post by drivebyacct2 »

ldng wrote: post #45
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite frankly, who cares? I'm tired of the GNOME release plans: remove features, make GTK+ controls bulkier than ever. It's like they're trying to ensure that the same amount of stuff fits on a screen despite increased screen resolution. I'm happy to see the role Compiz is taking on. A recent rewrite that cleaned things up, replacing more and more window management tasks, support for non-accelerated backends. I'd lov…

I don't care about them drifting away. I might even understand some point they made about GNOME. What I don't appreciate it's some people in Ubuntu world (that would be community and canonical) blaming GNOME Upstream for the drift. They want to lead their own platform somewhere else, fine, just do it. Don't pretend that you've been pushed to. The Gnome Zeitgeist project originated from the Ubuntu community and at fir…

What? Gnome 2.3 has been shedding features for sometime. Ability to change GDM theme? Gone. Ability to configure gnome screensavers? Gone. That's not even mentioning 3.0, but I understand that it's like KDE, in that 3.1 will be much better suited for full time use.

You miss the point on the controls. Unity WAS made for netbooks and tablets. It conserves UI space in a more concise manner (not to mention that I enjoy the search/icon paradigm. It's what Windows 7 did with dock/search-start-menu. OS X has the Dock and spotlight. The jury is in, it's popular)

Most of the themes I've seen for GNOME3 still look bulky. Maybe I haven't seen enough themes yet.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#47

Post by ldng »

balac wrote: post #20
ldng wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity doesn't strikes me as particularly light ... I am not sure pissing off core GNOME developers with its ever changing new directions is going to help them in the long run. On the other hand I might be proved wrong if while increase its user base Ubuntu manage to convert some of them in core durable developer. IMHO, then it's not GNOME anymore. It's a new desktop akin to XFCE as they diverge more and more. It was…

I'm glad they are deviating from core GNOME as they seem to have more focused art direction and better usability in general, for me Ubuntu is a much smoother and more pleasant Linux experience than any other distro for this reason.

Good for them, as long as they don't FUD on GNOME.

Better usability ? I don't think so, I remember being orce fed the first version of message indactor with Gwibber, Pidgin and Evolution were 3 entries of the same menu behaving totally differently and unconsistently.

Unity feels quite raw and bulky. I don't think my dad will search it's application by their exact names. INMHO, the Gnome-Shell menu is much better in that it let you see you apps a people familiar with any recent smartphone won't by lost. I can't say the same for Unity main menu.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#48

Post by wattsbaat »

motters wrote: post #19

It looks as if Ubuntu is making good progress on the user interface, despite the current apparent loss of functionality with Unity. Having well designed and user friendly features is only one part of the equation though. To really gain popularity they will need to be able to persuade hardware manufacturers to ship with Ubuntu installed by default, or at least as a dual boot option. So far this has proven difficult to…

Doesn't Microsoft pay hardware manufacturers to ship computers with Windows? I thought I heard of this happening with Dell. That seems like a major impediment to Ubuntu's shipping pre-installed/by default and its more widespread adoption.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#49

Post by rbanffy »

phaylon wrote: post #30
oozcitak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try setting load-users=false under [UserManager] in /etc/lightdm.conf?

I didn't install anything yet. I just googled for it to find out if it will be possible, since that was a rather large hassle during the last switch, and just recently got fixed and is now available as a checkbox option in the preferences. I found lots of articles and developer resources, but haven't found the documentation for it on the web yet. I assume that will change as exposure increases.

You can check. I installed lightdm in a couple minutes. Auto-login didn't work (it was on a shared desktop), there was some terminal keyboard weirdness and I reverted the change. Running "dpkg-reconfigure lightdm" allowed me to easily revert back to gdm.

Re: Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

#50

Post by wmf »

wattsbaat wrote: post #48
motters wrote: post #19

It looks as if Ubuntu is making good progress on the user interface, despite the current apparent loss of functionality with Unity. Having well designed and user friendly features is only one part of the equation though. To really gain popularity they will need to be able to persuade hardware manufacturers to ship with Ubuntu installed by default, or at least as a dual boot option. So far this has proven difficult to…

Doesn't Microsoft pay hardware manufacturers to ship computers with Windows? I thought I heard of this happening with Dell. That seems like a major impediment to Ubuntu's shipping pre-installed/by default and its more widespread adoption.

No, the (just-expired) antitrust settlement would not allow Microsoft to make Windows free or "less than free". However, PC vendors ship crapware that pays more than the Windows license cost.
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