From kde-core-devel Wed Jun 15 09:54:39 2011 From: Sebastian =?ISO-8859-1?Q?K=FCgler?= Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:54:39 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: KDM plans and lightDM Message-Id: <1425811.3bR1lSFqur () marvin ! vizzzion ! net> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=130813167904956 Hi Alex, On Monday, June 13, 2011 21:10:36 Alex Fiestas wrote: > Today something happened to me again, I turn on my laptop at the begining of > a meeting and when I needed it the battery was over because the laptop > didn't went to suspension (as I'm used). > > That makes me wonder what are the plans for KDM in this and other regards > since I haven't seen much activity on it (apart from bugfixing). > > Also, since the last Ubuntu Development Summit I started to look into > lightDM[1] as a possible alternative (at least for my use), I event managed > to patch kdisplaymanager.cpp to play nice with it. > > I'm not an expert on Display Managers so I can't really tell if lightDM is > good enough (or will be good enough) to replace KDM. When I asked to some > distribution people the first thing they told me is: "Does it support > XDMCP?" and I don't know even what XDMCP is... > > So, what are the plans for KDM? can we expect some power management > integration? and plymouth? > > For the experts: Does lightDM feel nice as a cross-desktop solution? is it > good enough? I don't think it's a solution to the problem. LightDM doesn't have any integration with powermanagement agents, so it doesn't solve the problem. Goes a bit like this: - "Hm, KDM doesn't have power management support" - "Let's think about LightDM then!" - "LightDM doesn't have it either" I think it's nice that someone's working on a replacement, but it seems to be kind of chicken-headed. What are the problems with KDM right now? 1 bit arcane UI, litlle themes 2 takes long to start 3 no PM integration 4 no touch input support (Note that the above comes from the top of my head, possibly you can do even one or more, but the default roughly looks like the above. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.) I think lightdm solves (2), but does so by cutting features, features which we probably need (some asked for XDMCP as an example). So lightDM might be useful for a specific situation where you need only the feature set that lightDM offers, On the other hand, KDM is rock-stable, secure and maintained. It's not shiny, and hasn't been built with "devices" in mind. As a result, I'm quite skeptical. But let code decide, not assumptions. Cheers, -- sebas http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9