Re: let's talk about SLIM

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> 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?
>>
>> 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.

I agree that GDM is a better choice for most users, and should be the
default.  I ask only that we retain a lightweight and portable display
manager service as an alternative.

     Thanks,
       Mark