lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[Yorvyk <yorvik.ubunto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:39:42 +0200
Julien Lavergne <gilir@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a bit late for that, but it still time to discuss such topic.
> 
> LightDM [1] will be the next display manager for Ubuntu, and probably
> Xubuntu (maybe Kubuntu also !). It will replace GDM which have a tight
> dependency on GNOME.
> 
> LightDM has the advantage to split the greeter (the UI part) and the
> core (which do all the black magic for users, consolkit etc ...). You
> can build a greeter which use GTK only, Qt, Webkit etc ... It's also
> heavily developed this cycle.
> 
> Last cycle I tested LightDM, but found that it was not ready. Also, LXDM
> is now in a good shape. I tested it briefly on Oneiric, and it seems in
> better shape now, and with RAM usage similar to LXDM (3.2 vs 2.3 Mb) 
> 
> To summarize :
> 
> Advantages:
> * More complete than LXDM
> * Maintenance shared with Ubuntu and Xubuntu
> * Heavily developed
> 
> Disadvantages :
> * New and less tested in Lubuntu than LXDM
> * Dependant to Ubuntu team for changes : we are not free to modify the
> DM, and it's possible that Ubuntu team introduce a change which
> indirectly impact others flavors (remember Ubiquity changes for disk
> requierement last cycle)
> 
> IMO, if items I mentioned at the UDS are managed by LightDM [2], we can
> try to switch for this cycle. If later in the cycle we discover that
> there are problems, we can still switch again to LXDM.
> 
> What do you think ?
> 
> Regards,
> Julien Lavergne
> 
> [1] : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LightDM
> [2] : https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-o-lightdm
> 
> 
I've been running Ubuntu Oneiric with lightdm for a while and it appears to behave it's self OK.   
Having had a bit of a read about it I don't see an advantage in either, from a user's point of view, and I'm a bit lost with the technical (dis)advantages. 
A few thoughts.  With the change to GTK3 and the potential problems to be resolved with that, are we adding another headache for the few competent devs we have.
Or would having Lightdm give us one less problem, as others in the Ubuntu community would be dealing with it and we wouldn't have to worry about lxdm either.
Would sticking with what we know be better as lxdm doesn't have any real problems and performs the function for which it is intended.

-- 
Steve Cook (Yorvyk)

http://lubuntu.net