GDM Setting For Ubuntu 9.10

The setup utility that comes in Ubuntu Karmic is missing most of the older GDM setup utility's functionality. If you're tired of not being able to configure many of these settings, two community members have come to your rescue. Garth Johnson and Nick Glynn have developed a great tool called gdm2setup which put all of the functionality back in the hands of the users through a familiar and simple GUI.

Grab it here or try it out from their PPA!

Source: Robert Ancell

Jaunty's New Login Screen And Other Features

Softpedia has just posted a sneak peek at some of the upcoming features in Jaunty. One of these new features was introduces with tonight's updates and it is a brand new login screen a.k.a. GDM (GNOME Display Manager) theme, which is black and has a nice Ubuntu logo in the right bottom corner. The new login screen is entitled "Human" and it was created by Kenneth Wimer and Mat Tomaszewski for Canonical.

Check it out here...

The New GDM Is Available For Testing

Today Sebastien Bacher made it possible to try the new GDM, currently planed for Jaunty+1, in Intrepid. On the Desktop mailing list Sebastian wrote:

GNOME upstream worked on a GDM code refactoring some cycles ago, the new version is not used in ubuntu yet, but it's being considered for next jaunty+1 and it would be nice to start giving it testing now.

The upgrade plans are described on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Jaunty/GdmUpgrade and you can get it a first version in the desktop team ppa now.

To try it add "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main" to your sources.list and install gdm-new

There is some known issues:
- the new version conflicts with gdm, fast-user-switch-applet and gdm-guest-session, those and ubuntu-desktop will be removed when you install the new gdm version
- the new gdm has a switch user applet but it didn't get the ubuntu changes which happened during the intrepid cycle
- the new gdm will get started directly after installation, that should close your session but you will be switched to gdm, you can select your current user to resume the session use though
- there is no configuration migration nor graphical tools to do changes to the configuration
- the new version might be lacking some of the options you were using

The new version should be mostly working though and let you log in, switch between users, suspend the computer, reboot, etc.

If you do try the new version and have some comments feel free to reply on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list, if the user feedback is good the new version will be uploaded to universe.

Source: Sebastien Bacher

For more information about the new GDM, visit http://live.gnome.org/GDM/NewDesign

The GDM login experience

A new GDM that uses OpenGL has been discussed and ideas have been thrown around. The project didn't make it into Intrepid, but hopefully we will see this new feature in the next Ubuntu release. It would help Ubuntu raise the bar and exceed the expectations. Of course this is again the work of Mirco Müller. Here is a link for the specs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/GdmFaceBrowser

As you can see below, two previews have been released:



The login via GDM is meant to default to a face-browser allowing simple point-and-click user-selection. Only the password-entry will require the user to use the keyboard. It is still possible to type in the login-id instead of selecting the user with a mouse-click on her/his image. This will also cause the set of displayed user-faces to be filtered to the remaining completion-possibilities, thus rendering the remaining images larger and making the hit-area for a mouse-click even bigger.



The official name of it is "Login Experience" now, not "Face Browser" anymore.

Read Mirco Müller own blog post here: http://macslow.thepimp.net/?p=163