gdm changes and the live cd

[Lars Herrmann]

On 03/04/2011 09:46 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 02:57 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> There's really quite a few problems. 
> 
> gdm offered only a limited choice of a single layout with no variants,
> which was sufficient for entering your password, but then some people
> were upset that they had to select their keyboard layout again in the
> session, so we made the gdm choice transfer in the session. That in turn
> made people upset who have a complicated, multi-layout or variant-using
> setup in the session and did not want that overwritten. Then we made it
> so that the gdm layout is only added to the existing session
> configuration, then we made further tweaks ... and still, it was never
> right.
> 
> Ultimatively, 99% of all passwords out there consist of ascii only, so
> why not keep it simple and forego all this crazyness ?
> 
>>> 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.
> 
> This is really only an issue for the live cd, though. In a regular
> installation, it is just a one-time annoyance. You log in once, select
> your language, and you are all set. Next time you log in, you get your
> language right away.
> 
which get's you back to what's the purpose of the LiveCD. Isn't the
primary use case to give users an impression of what they would get with
an install - without taking risk and time to actually install ?

I wonder what kind of impression you provide by completely ignoring the
fact that they might not use en_US or understand English well enough to
*find* and *use* the language settings. Not to mention the relogin -
this is juts so 1995

If you want to ignore a minority of users requirements, then do exactly
this and don't change anything. I didn't consider the outlined use cases
overly relevant for the LiveCD, but I might be missing something.

Just my 5 cents

Lars