Is the display manager only a login screen?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 13:12 +0100, Paul Smith wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> Is the display manager only a login screen? Or is it also the backbone
> of the desktop manager?
> 
> Could you please elaborate a bit on this? I have searched on Google
> for it, and got the impression that a display manager is not more than
> a login screen.

A display manager manages displays (duh!), since you can have more than
one and they might have different specs and be located in different
places. A typical function is to fire up a login screen, which provides
the entry point to a desktop manager (often selectable). However the
display manager doesn't participate in this beyond detecting when the
desktop manager terminates and putting up a new login screen.

For more detail, you need to read up on the X Window System. This is not
a specifically Linux thing. In fact it's not strictly even a Unix thing.

poc