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Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM
dkd903 writes "Earlier, during the Natty development cycle we reported that LightDM is being considered as a replacement for GDM. That did not happen for Ubuntu 11.04, but today it has been confirmed at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest that LightDM is finally replacing GDM in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric."
Unity Vista(tm) is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity Vista. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. “It’ll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called ‘phones’ and run Android.”
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> But does not actually provide a shut down option, because that might confuse users too much.
Ah, but if you are one of the advanced users (who GNOME wishes would just take the hint and switch to another desktop) who insist on a shutdown option, you can go read the arcane lore on a blog that describes in perfect detail how to download a non-supported third party plugin that will add a shutdown option. Of course the blog post isn't easy to find on Google and documents a procedure that doesn't quite work right with the current release and the link to the actual download is now a 404 error with herbal viagra adverts on it.
Democrat delenda est
Dunno about LightDM or wayland, but Unity and Chromium are a massive step backwards rather than an improvement. Unity is buggy and a pain to use, and Chromium has shit for extensions and still won't work right with adblock. No thanks. You want a better experience, install XFCE and XDM with Compiz Fusion for the eye-candy. You want bloated garbage that makes your computer completely unsable, install the new default Ubuntu or Kubuntu distros.
It's a normal X login manager without all the extra crap from gdm and kdm, and since it's in the Ubuntu repos already, all it needs is a good theme.
I really like Unity, too. It got me to finally try Xfce, and I'm very happy with the change. (I've been meaning to try it out for ages, but never got around to it.)
After switching back to 'classic' I just fired up synaptic, installed Xfce and whatever recommended additions I thought looked good, logged out and back in using Xfce, and I haven't had an urge to go back yet. Granted, it's only been a few days, but the things I do every day work as well or better.
I liked it so much that I installed Xubuntu on another system, and really like the defaults they put in place there.
I think the next time I reinstall the OS on my 'regular' computer (as opposed to just upgrading Ubuntu) I'll be grabbing Xubuntu.
WALSTIB!
why did i have to get this far down to find this question, and why is there no answer yet. is it that hard to spend 3 words in the summary telling me me what a DM is in this case, and whether G or light will matter to me?
While I like the idea behind LightDM & prefer Chromium over Firefox, that wasn't why I said it would change Linux for the better.
I think there is a lot of dogma within the Linux universe which needs to be shaken up once in a while. Survival of the fittest and all of that. We've seen recently where LibreOffice forked away from OpenOffice in a move that was almost universally welcomed and which has breathed an incredablt amount of new life into the project. Ubuntu's move to Unity, while much less warmly received, caused a large amount of navel gazing within the Gnome ranks and I believe it will pay a lot of dividends in the near future especially with interoperability.
Is Wayland ready for primetime? Nobody thinks so yet. Is Chromium better than Firefox? Depends on your opinion. But with the major trend setting distro making these changes, it forces everyone to re-evaluate and that is the best thing that can happen.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'