gdm changes and the live cd

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Freitag, den 04.03.2011, 18:25 -0500 schrieb Matthias Clasen: 
> There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd setup,
> and will require some changes:
> 
> GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
> to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
> to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
> conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
> vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc). 

What exactly were the problems here? User configuration overwrites
system configuration and the choice from the login overwrites the user's
setting since it is more recent. There may have been technical problems
under the hood, but I think GDM solved them very well and the users were
happy. They will be way unhappier with what you are proposing.

> Without these
> choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
> screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
> directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
> users who need a different language will have to select the language in
> System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
> problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.

Only ~ 40% of our users are using en_US. Forcing the majority to log in
to a language they don't use and perhaps not even understand seems very
drastic to me.

I have to admit that this is what LXDM on my LXDE spin does, too, but I
know people see it as the biggest problem of the spin and really hate
it. QA told me that it's a major problem and that's why I'm working on
changing this for F15.

> We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
> obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
> alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
> it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
> (the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
> the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
> I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
> it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
> live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.

I don't think this is the main role of the live CD and if the desktop
team had come to FUDCon Tempe they knew that many of our contributors
and developers agree with me.

As an ambassador I want to showcase Fedora and the people who come to
our booth want to try it. This is the main role of the live CD. If
people wanted to install it straight away they could also use the
installation DVD with all it's advantages

The anaconda folks are already unhappy with the installation from live
CD and I guess advertising the installer so prominent will not make
things better. 

> Thoughts ?

Yes, a lot, besides the ones I already wrote down.

First of all I'd like to see an open discussion but you are stating
facts: "GDM no longer has...", "We no longer show...". It seems the
desktop team already agreed on this and I wonder where the discussion
took place.

Having this discussion here is a good start, but as GDM is not only used
by the desktop live CD I'd like to see all affected parties involved.

Regards,
Christoph