Console Display Manager

[ghost1227]

Fed up with the overhead of gdm and kdm, and the instability of qingy and slim, I sat down recently and began working on a project dubbed CDM - the Console Display Manager. CDM is a (relatively) full-featured display manager written in pure bash. But how many features can you put in a bash display manager? Surprisingly, quite a few!

CDM Supports:
*Multiple X sessions (user logins are all handled through tty1)
*Any DE/WM
*Configurable console logins
*Users restricted to a single environment bypass the menu on login
*Root is automatically dropped to console
*Theming
*All settings are configurable on a per-user basis

Granted CDM is far from perfect, but it's come a long way already and is still being improved as quickly as I can find and repair bugs and add features. CDM is available via github and has a bugtracker here. If you're looking for a minimalistic display manager, please try it out and tell me what you think!

If anyone would like to package CDM for Debian, please let me know.

[dust hill resident]

Excellent. I approve of this project. I've recently been quite upset with GDM (especially since they decided to re-write everything and also stop providing a GUI tool for configuration, and documentation for the config files is hard to find.) Heh heh.

Although I can't give much feedback, I'd like to encourage you on this. I think this is definitely a good idea.

[62chevy]

GDM = God D*mn Mess. Dont use it because it causes X to run rampant on my cpu. Stop gdm and X calms down to a fraction of what it was. SeaHorse s*cks too. But that's an other story.

[penpen]

I've been looking for a nice console-based alternative to *dm. I had pretty much resigned myself to just logging in at the console and typing startx. I'll have to give it some testing when I get some free time.

[Paulfocused]

I've been looking for a nice console-based alternative to *dm. I had pretty much resigned myself to just logging in at the console and typing startx. I'll have to give it some testing when I get some free time.

I've been doing the same thing here lately. This CDM sounds like a great idea.

[jheaton5]

Well, I'm in unplowed dirt here. First of all, I have not had any issues with gdm. I have absolutely no idea what a cdm would do. Google is not my friend on this one.

[ghost1227]

Check out the original post on the Arch forums (I use Arch so they got to be the first guinea pigs). It has a good bit of the debuging that we went through before the bug tracker opened, as well as user experiences and screenshots (and a few extra themes).

[jheaton5]

Thanks. I saw the Arch Linux post in google but it seemed to be the same as the one here. I didn't even open it. I'll go there now.

[craigevil]

I use GMD with lxde never had any issues, I was using slim but gdm loads lxde faster. the lxde devs are working on a login manager for lxde called lxdm.
http://blog.lxde.org/?p=531

Never noticed gdm causing X to use a lot of ram.
Processes 106 Uptime 22:59 Memory 211.2/493.5MB debian sid lxde, gdm, lxterminal+irssi+shell-fm, evince, parcelite, evince, firefox, not much being used even with all of these apps in use.

Linux is all about freedom use whatever works for you.

[62chevy]

... Never noticed gdm causing X to use a lot of ram.
Processes 106 Uptime 22:59 Memory 211.2/493.5MB debian sid lxde, gdm, lxterminal+irssi+shell-fm, evince, parcelite, evince, firefox, not much being used even with all of these apps in use.

Linux is all about freedom use whatever works for you.

Not a lot of ram a lot of cpu time. It seams like Gnome in general is a cpu hog. Freedom is one of the things I like about Linux and Debian gives you a lot of freedom to choose from

[bugsbunny]

gdm uses a lot of cputime? Some proof? I last rebooted this system just about 48 hours ago.
gdm cpu time used? - less than 1 second. Resident memory in use? 1.2 MB
Biggest users of CPU time since that reboot are, in descending order:
Xorg
deluged
compiz
firefox
conky (at just under 15 minutes)

Everything else is well under 10 minutes.

No surprises in that list considering what I've been doing on here.
The load on the system is minimal in any case. If you want to write a display manager in bash script that's fine - but don't go spouting nonsense about gdm being a cpu hog, by any reasonable definition of the term.

[julian67]

I've never found a resource usage problem with gdm. Almost no CPU time used and memory used is in kilobytes (the 100% CPU use seen above is mencoder thrashing both cores).

[penpen]

My issue with gdm is not so much that I think it is a memory hog (I don't really think any of the DMs are very memory intensive), but I think it would be nice to be able to sanely launch X or a shell from the same login manager. I also don't like having to navigate gdm when I don't have a mouse.

[julian67]

My issue with gdm is not so much that I think it is a memory hog (I don't really think any of the DMs are very memory intensive), but I think it would be nice to be able to sanely launch X or a shell from the same login manager. I also don't like having to navigate gdm when I don't have a mouse.

Not using any login manager will give you exactly the flexibility you need

[Bulkley]

I ditched my display manager a long time ago. I just type sx and I'm in.

ghost1227's project sounds good. Got a screen shot?

[Bro.Tiag]

I ditched my display manager a long time ago. I just type sx and I'm in.

ghost1227's project sounds good. Got a screen shot?

Here is one that is posted over to the arch forum.


Also here is his web site for it, cdm (I think it's a cool site).

Cheers

[ghost1227]

That's a bit old, there a few features added since then... I'll add a new screenshot soon

[62chevy]

gdm uses a lot of cputime? Some proof? I last rebooted this system just about 48 hours ago.
gdm cpu time used? - less than 1 second. Resident memory in use? 1.2 MB
Biggest users of CPU time since that reboot are, in descending order:
Xorg
deluged
compiz
firefox
conky (at just under 15 minutes)

Everything else is well under 10 minutes.

No surprises in that list considering what I've been doing on here.
The load on the system is minimal in any case. If you want to write a display manager in bash script that's fine - but don't go spouting nonsense about gdm being a cpu hog, by any reasonable definition of the term.

Hi bugsbunny your right Xorg is normally a busy little beaver. But my experience (for what that's worth) say some how GDM adds to the load of xorg. When I was using GDM xorg would use between 6 and 15% cpu time at idle with only xterm and top working. Removed GDM and xorg went to .7% to 2.5% cpu usage. Graphics also smoothed out. I know it's mostly seat of the pants but dont know any other way to measure it.

[Lou]

I ditched my display manager a long time ago. I just type sx and I'm in.

Ditto here, i just type 'x' and i'm in like Flynn.

[bugsbunny]

Have any of you looked at qingy?
Debian -- Package Search Results -- qingy

Qingy Is Not GettY

What is qingy?

qingy is a replacement for getty. Written in C, it uses DirectFB to provide a fast, nice GUI without the overhead of the X Windows System. It allows the user to log in and start the session of his choice (text console, gnome, kde, wmaker, ...).