Re: let's talk about SLIM

["Bernd S." <Rs1R8ng1@protonmail.ch>]

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I agree as well that SLiM should be replaced as the default display manager,
for one because of the problems mentioned, and also because it is no longer
maintained.

I also agree that the replacement should be something really lightweight and independent,
I really like the suggestion of OpenBSDs xenodm for example.

I do not think that gdm would be a good base default option, it should rather be used
as the default for using %desktop-services with Gnome, as already suggested.

> 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?
>>
>> 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?
>
>> 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’.

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