Re: let's talk about SLIM

[ng0 <ng0@infotropique.org>]

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Ludovic Courtès transcribed 2.2K bytes:
> Hi,
> 
> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:
> 
> > ng0 <ng0@infotropique.org> writes:
> >
> >> It seems to me as if SLIM can be dropped once we
> >> have something else in place. Would you agree?

I no longer agree with my own proposed action. But the switch of
the default choice is important.

> > It would be good to keep a display manager service that is lightweight
> > in terms of both resource usage, runtime-dependency closure, and
> > build-dependency closure.  I'm not attached to SLiM, but I would not
> > consider the existence of a GDM service to be sufficient grounds for
> > removal of SLiM.
> >
> > Apart from the needs of those on older hardware, or those who wish to
> > build everything locally from source code, I'm not sure if we've ever
> > successfully built GDM on a non-Intel system.  GDM depends on mozjs-17,
> > which I've never managed to build on mips64el-linux, and it fails on
> > armhf-linux too.  Fixing mozjs on mips64el-linux is probably not
> > trivial, and yet I'm happily using SLiM on my Yeeloong, which is still
> > the only non-Intel GuixSD system as far as I know.
> 
> I agree we should not remove SLiM.  I think the question is more about
> the default we want to have.
> 
> For people using %desktop-services with GNOME and all that, it probably
> makes sense to default to GDM.
> 
> For the lightweight-desktop example, it may makes sense to stick to a
> lightweight login tool.
> 
> One grief I have against SLiM is that it lacks i18n support.  If lightdm
> fixes that, I would recommend it instead of SLiM in the
> lightweight-desktop example.  I haven’t investigated though.
> 
> Thoughts?

My main concern indeed is the way keyboard layouts are handled in SLIM
(see https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26234). As a default
this is not good.
However it is easy to switch the default selection of a login tool,
but the default choice should be one that makes it easy to select one
or multiple keyboard layouts from a list.
The default is what most people will use for GuixSD. And if they can
no longer type in the password the way they've set them up in the
installer or on tty after boot because the default login manager they
selected is written this way, they will be quick to disregard as a
decision Guix made.
The default choice represents "the Guix preference" (for the time it was made).

> > Personally, I'd be much happier with a working system that could be
> > audited and not have the audit become stale before its completion.  The
> > amount of code churn in my systems is so great that it's infeasible for
> > me to audit all of the changes coming down the pipe.  I find that very
> > uncomfortable.
> 
> On one hand I sympathize (I don’t use GNOME/KDE/Xfce and have long tried
> to avoid tools depending on the whole Freedesktop stack in my “base”
> system), but on the other hand, I think we have to realize that (1) no
> single individual can audit more than a tiny fraction of their system,
> and (2) when it comes to running a full desktop environment, we’re even
> further away from that goal anyway, GDM or not.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.
-- 
ng0
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