From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: let's talk about SLIM Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 10:53:35 +0200 Message-ID: <87inh577xs.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20170826213253.qxyveyztlhao22bu@abyayala> <87pobgkc39.fsf@netris.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41185) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dmykn-0000Bh-SD for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 30 Aug 2017 04:53:42 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dmykk-00044H-Ft for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 30 Aug 2017 04:53:41 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87pobgkc39.fsf@netris.org> (Mark H. Weaver's message of "Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:08:42 -0400") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Mark H Weaver Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi, Mark H Weaver skribis: > ng0 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=E2=80=99t 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=E2=80=99t use GNOME/KDE/Xfce and have long = tried to avoid tools depending on the whole Freedesktop stack in my =E2=80=9Cbase= =E2=80=9D 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=E2=80=99re = even further away from that goal anyway, GDM or not. Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.