SDDM: A Lightweight QML-Based Display Manager

[curaga]

What is wrong with adding the ability to use shaders? If most of us the window managers that are composited and gpu-accelerated, why shouldn't the display manager be? Why should we restrict ourselves and theme designers? Display manager is the one first things a user sees it has to be attractive, IMHO.

Because the login manager is one of the things that should never fail.

That means it should not display corruption because some theme designer made a typo in a shader. Or crash. Or be unusable in a multitude of other ways.

[ChrisXY]

Lightdm can have arbitrarily complex greeters too, by the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8nm4NpaVXE

[aavci]

Because the login manager is one of the things that should never fail.

That means it should not display corruption because some theme designer made a typo in a shader. Or crash. Or be unusable in a multitude of other ways.

Actually we shouldn't graphical login managers at all because display drivers are source of many bugs. Wait a minute, we shouldn't use display managers at all because an uninitialized pointer can cause a crash, too.

Or the system admin could do the responsible thing and test the theme _before_ setting as default.

[curaga]

It is the responsibility of the theme maker to test - picture a bigger deployment with varius systems, surely you don't expect the admin to get one of each just to test a login manager. Near none of the themers will do so, and shaders written on Nvidia cards will likely crash and burn on any compliant platform.

This is a real risk, and I guarantee you will see that happen if you go there.

[aavci]

It is the responsibility of the theme maker to test - picture a bigger deployment with varius systems, surely you don't expect the admin to get one of each just to test a login manager. Near none of the themers will do so, and shaders written on Nvidia cards will likely crash and burn on any compliant platform.

This is a real risk, and I guarantee you will see that happen if you go there.

I do professional 3D development and I know what you exactly mean. Sometimes I want to show the finger to the NVidia just like Linus did.

Anyway, we shouldn't restrict features just because someone can mess up. I want to have a beatiful login manager at my computer and doing my part to realize this. If this is not suitable for some other use cases, then they shouldn't use it. One size doesn't fit all.

For your use case system admin could select a simpler theme without shaders, or go for another display manager.

[aavci]

Implemented maui login manager mockup as an SDDM theme: