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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Ubuntu 9.10 Preview: New Login Manager

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • October 3, 2009
The beta version of Ubuntu 9.10, which appeared last week, brought a number of much-anticipated aesthetic improvements to the desktop.  Here's a look at the slick new login manager that users can expect when Karmic is officially released at the end of this month.

Screenshots don't do justice to the new gdm experience, so I've created a quick screencast using a live session:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJDNmBlUyKM[/youtube]

The beta version of Ubuntu 9.10, which appeared last week, brought a number of much-anticipated aesthetic improvements to the desktop.  Here’s a look at the slick new login manager that users can expect when Karmic is officially released at the end of this month.

Screenshots don’t do justice to the new gdm experience, so I’ve created a quick screencast using a live session:

For my tastes, this is a great improvement over the traditional Gnome login screen, and adds the kind of graceful elegance that users have come to expect from modern operating systems.

To Ubuntu’s credit, this works without video acceleration, meaning that even older computers can take advantage of the graceful login experience.

As the screencast shows, the animation is a bit choppy and hangs for a few seconds at one point, but that may have more to do with being run in a VirtualBox virtual machine than the code itself.  I haven’t yet played with the Karmic beta release on enough different machines to know.

I also like that the Gnome desktop doesn’t appear until everything is completely loaded and ready to go.  There’s no frustration equal to thinking the computer has booted completely, only to click something and discover that the system is not yet actually functional.

I’ve spent long enough being teased by operating systems, both proprietary and open-source, that display the desktop long before it’s ready to use.  The time from login to functional desktop may not have actually improved appreciably in Karmic–I didn’t measure it, but it doesn’t feel much faster–but at least now it’s clear when the system is truly ready to perform.

Other aesthetic improvements in Ubuntu 9.10 include new default wallpaper and icon themes.  Stay tuned to WorksWithU for coverage of these and other new features in Karmic.

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26 comments

  1. Avatar The K dude October 5, 2009 @ 11:26 am
    Reply

    It’s not a login manager/screen, in fact it’s an X-based splash screen that was designed to replace usplash in the long run. It’s all part of Ubuntu’s desire to start the X server as quickly as possible and to make a kernel-mode splash screen unnecessarry. Softpedia had a piece about it for quite a while, over here.

  2. Avatar Wesley October 5, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
    Reply

    I think the new look whatever it is really makes the user experience a lot nicer. I especially like the new icons.

  3. Avatar László Torma (toros) 's status on Monday, 05-Oct-09 17:27:41 October 5, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
    Reply

    […] http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/03/ubuntu-910-preview-new-login-manager/ a few seconds ago from Gwibber […]

  4. Avatar juarez October 5, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
    Reply

    Are you kidding me? It stinks!

  5. Avatar seif sallam October 5, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
    Reply

    i installed karmic on my laptop and its choppy, therefore its not caused by VirtualBox

  6. Avatar Hmm October 5, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
    Reply

    It still slowly loads the desktop, drawing it piece by piece in front of you?

    I thought it was going to get the desktop all ready and then, after it’s drawn, switch instantly from the loading screen to a complete desktop.

  7. Avatar Mel October 5, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
    Reply

    It looks better, but until now I don’t feel a real improvement. And sadly, the desktop appears piece by piece and it doesn’t fade like it’s supposed to.

    I’ve tested it on my Gateway GT5676 (AMD Phenom Quad 2.3 – 4gb RAM) and Acer Aspire 5050 (old but trusty laptop).

  8. Avatar Roy Schestowitz (schestowitz) 's status on Tuesday, 06-Oct-0 October 6, 2009 @ 8:39 am
    Reply

    […] http://www.workswithu.com/2009/10/03/ubuntu-910-preview-new-login-manager/ […]

  9. Avatar Links 06/10/2009: DeviceVM Spreads, More GNU/Linux Releases October 6, 2009 @ 10:50 am
    Reply

    […] Ubuntu 9.10 Preview: New Login Manager Other aesthetic improvements in Ubuntu 9.10 include new default wallpaper and icon themes. Stay tuned to WorksWithU for coverage of these and other new features in Karmic. […]

  10. Avatar webmaren October 11, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
    Reply

    I find the new GDM screen horrifyingly bad. I doesn’t allow any customization at all (beyond setting auto-login which doesn’t even belong in a Linux environment), and I can’t even change it to make me type in my username.

    Ubuntu has been slowly drifting towards restricting user choice in its distribution, and this latest move has pushed me that much closer to switching to a less Windows/Mac-esque distro.

    I chose Linux because Linux gives me freedom.

  11. Avatar Jef Spaleta October 11, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
    Reply

    @webmaren:

    Uhm, to my knowledge the gdm greeter code you are commenting about is not the result of an Ubuntu specific patch or any Ubuntu specific work at all. It’s inappropriate to blame Ubuntu developers for featuresets in upstream codebases that Ubuntu developers aren’t actively contributing to like gdm.

    What you are seeing is the upstream GNOME project’s latest gdm that is part of the GNOME 2.28 release. What you are seeing is the gdm experience the the GNOME developers expect you to see. Ubuntu has finally updated the gdm they ship to the latest upstream gdm release for Karmic after skipping multiple gdm releases. Ubuntu shipped gdm 2.20 for the three prior releases, skipping the release of gdm 2.22 and 2.24 and 2.26 even though the rest of GNOME was updated.

    -jef

  12. Avatar Raf October 14, 2009 @ 3:09 am
    Reply

    New gdm greeter is a major source of complains in Fedora release for a long time (since Fedora 9). It causes a lot of troubles on large systems, which uses e.g. remote home directory mounting. The new greeter lists the names of all persons ever logged into the machine, and change of this behavior requires the use of gconf, which for unexperience users may be hard. It would be very usefull to provide any login screen configuration tool in Ubuntu.

  13. Avatar Rodnox October 26, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
    Reply

    Don’t like it.

    I don’t want my username to be displayed directly. It’s kind of a lack of security.

    When u have to guess Username and Password, the chance to have a match are dramatically smaller than when u have one of them written right in front of you.

    I know that the Username is possible to be found out with the system mounted to another system, but why making it easier?

    I’d like to switch to “Tpe Username amp; Password” and I’d like to customize the Logindesign. Both has been disabled so far.

    Negative t me.

  14. Avatar Michał Borsuk October 27, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
    Reply

    “Ubuntu has been slowly drifting towards restricting user choice in its distribution”

    I second that opinion. Just noticed that I cannot remote-login to another machine. And the options of gdmsetup in 9.10 are simply pathetic. 9.04 allows to set more than one X server, and I am going to use it with dual-head (two-monitor) computer to get rid of two machines to administer, but I guess it’s back to the old xterm and nano, and editing files “by hand”.

    If simplicity means hiding everything from users, then that’s not much better than windows. That’s not better at all, that’s windows.

  15. Avatar Jef Spaleta October 27, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
    Reply

    @Michal:

    You can’t blame Ubuntu for gdm development decisions that are made upstream…especially when Canonical nor Ubuntu developers are active in the upstream gdm development.

    You might like to read these references for your particular usage case:

    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Multiseat
    http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat/index.php/Mdm

    -jef

  16. Avatar Tavisto October 28, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
    Reply

    I found this link, it might help some of you on here..

    http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/09/hack-karmics-gdm-login-screen.html

    I am about to go log out and try it. Hope it works.

  17. Avatar Blinky October 30, 2009 @ 5:13 am
    Reply

    “graceful elegance” – made me laugh, what a load of BS.

    I dreaded new GDM login manager. I can’t see why the knome people have bothered replacing a working peice of software with this POS.

    By default it takes away the nice things of X network transparency etc. These guy’s (Gnome devs) must be smoking something when they thought this one up.

    hat’s wrong with it:

    1. By default listing available users (bad security – you’ve give half away the user/password combination away).

    2. No usefull config utility (enable remote login’s, option of showing a chooser etc.

    3. Config data in 2 different places (/etc/gdm/custom.conf and the gconf tree for gdm user). Way to do it guy’s – muppets!

    What does a login (xdm? kdm? etc) manager need to do? login a user and get the fu*k out of the way. It’s not like a user is using that like a normal application (openoffice, firefox). People don’t sit there staring at the login screen all day, it just needs to be simple and useful (old GDM minus the theming).

    It feels like most of the OSS software is moving forward and the tw*ts at gnome keep dragging everthing/everyone backwards

  18. Avatar Grey November 2, 2009 @ 9:31 pm
    Reply

    The new login SUX! No configuration, displaying my username, WTF were they thinking?
    This is a huge step backwards! I’ve gone from a nice GUI to being forced to use command line to configure the login! GEEBUS H CHRISTIE! This goes completely against Ubuntu’s designated goals. WTF!? This has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve seen Ubuntu do ever!

  19. Avatar Derek Mayne November 7, 2009 @ 9:28 am
    Reply

    This is bad guys – Surely your graphic designers and human interfaces team were on vacation when you put this stinker out – its a retro step from the clean professional end user friendly login that we had previously. I had just started to convert non-techie, windoze users taht Ubuntu wasn’t just a geeky toy. As for the lack of config options… ugh, I can’t be bothered to go on… this just stinks. Sort it out.

  20. Avatar ALex November 7, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
    Reply

    how many dozen’s wine bottles did you drink man?

  21. Avatar WhyName November 13, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
    Reply

    Aaargh
    I wonder what will be next.. What customisation options will they remove in 10.04 ? Not much left. Perhaps we don’t need any GUI preferences dialogues, control canters, no choices at all. This is totally wrong. Unbelievable. Someone don’t like his job. Cannot see other reason for this. Both ubuntu and gnome.

  22. Avatar DaVince November 15, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
    Reply

    If you haven’t seen Xubuntu’s startup, you’ve seen nothing. Beautiful right from the start. Dancing fire flies and everything, and a nice black/blue style to it all!

  23. Avatar DaVince November 15, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
    Reply

    I just noticed how much they took away from the login editor… Ouch, why’d they do that?!

  24. Avatar gnome user November 22, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
    Reply

    New gdm sucks.
    Please fix that.

  25. Avatar Joe Brown December 1, 2009 @ 6:50 am
    Reply

    The new login just looks like something from Vista. Next time, leave us the possibility to opt out. You are learning from Redmond too fast.

  26. Avatar Ale December 22, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
    Reply

    Definitely the new login screen is BAD. It is DEFINITELY not adapted for a network environment. I still didn’t try that, but I just fear seeing 10,000 users from the LDAP server on the login screen… I can for sure not distribute anything like this to the users here. It is also a security issue. It is the first time that I see such a bad thing in Ubuntu. I hope they’ll address it seriously in 10.04. Don’t want to see such a bad thing in a LTS release, this might possibly mean for us switching to Debian, if the issue can’t be solved completely by editing the config files (such a login screen is okay on a home computer maybe, but not at a school/library/office/…).

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