Revision as of 12:54, 10 July 2013

SDDM as the default KDE display manager instead of KDM

Summary

Retire KDM as the default display manager of the KDE Fedora Spin in favor of SDDM.

Owner

KDE SIG
Email: than@redhat.com, ltinkl@redhat.com, dvratil@redhat.com, mbriza@redhat.com, jgrulich@redhat.com, rdieter@fedoraproject.org, kevin.kofler@chello.at
IRC: #fedora-kde

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 20
Last updated: 2013-07-09
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

As described in many articles and discussions, KDM is nearing its end of life and it's time we decided upon the successor.

I'm proposing to switch to SDDM, which is a new project that suits our needs perfectly despite its immaturity:

As of July 2013, KDM's maintenance consists of bugfixes for the most painful bugs, consisting of only about 20 actual commits to the repository in last two years (excluding translation, themes and merges), adding many new features would require major changes to a lot of the code and there is no active maintainer.

SDDM is written in C++11/Qt5 (compared to the bits of XDM in KDM), compilable against Qt4, supports QtQuick theming and its upstream is quite active.

Compared to the current DM, KDM, it currently lacks a few features (such as XDMCP) but adds some other ones (QtQuick themes) or is currently adding them (Keyboard layout switching in the greeter).

Benefit to Fedora

We'll lead the way for other distributions in terms of which DM to provide for KDE Frameworks 5' / Plasma 2.

Instead of bugreports for obsolete and unmaintainable KDM we'll be getting bugreports for fresh SDDM with clean codebase

Scope

Proposal owners:
- Create sddm and sddm-kcm packages.
- Change kde-settings and the spin-kickstarts to provide SDDM package instead of KDM
- (eventually) exclude KDM from the kde-workspace package

Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Previous versions of Fedora won't be impacted by this change. Their users will have the possibility to switch from whichever DM they were using to SDDM.

SDDM is now lacking some functionality compared to KDM, namely XDMCP, VNC and multi-seat support. They are planned to be added.

How To Test

Anybody able to run KDE Plasma Workspaces as his desktop can test change.

System preparation

Create some testing users

for i in test1 test2 test3; do useradd --password test $i; done

Install and enable SDDM

yum install sddm # when the packages are included in the repositories)

systemctl enable --force sddm.service

Basic testing

(basically applies to every DM/DE combination)

1. Log in as test1

2. From the Kickoff menu, select Leave > Switch User > New Session.

SDDM greeter should appear

3. Repeat steps 1. and 2. for users test2 and test3

4. Try switching the sessions (VTs) with [Ctrl+Alt+F<x>] keys.

test1 should be on VT1 ([Ctrl+Alt+F1]), test2 on VT2 and so on.

5. Try switching the sessions using the Leave > Switch User dialog.

6. Log out user test2 and switch to test1, then use the Leave -> Switch User dialog to switch to test3.

7. Use the Leave > Switch User > New Session dialog to log test2 again.

Please report any deviations from the expected usual multi-user desktop experience.

Further tests

Also, please test using your regular workflow, especially if your computer is used by more than a single user.

If you're a user of some of the special authentication methods (such as a central authentication server, or a fingerprint reader), please test logging in while using them, too, and report the results to us.

User Experience

KDE Spin login screen's appearance changes.

Login screen configuration menu in systemsettings will be different (upstream provides its own KCM module)

Dependencies

Only dependent package will be sddm-kcm, providing the configuration module for SDDM.

Coordination with other maitainers won't be necessary now. However it is possible other DEs will decide to use SDDM as their default DM in future releases.

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: Continue to use KDM as the default KDE Spin display manager.

Contingency deadline: Beta freeze

Blocks release? Depends on the state of the feature. If some basic functionality of a display manager is missing, we'll have to revert to KDM.

Documentation

https://github.com/sddm/sddm

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2013/03/logging-into-plasma-workspaces-2.html

http://www.sharpley.org.uk/node/14

http://www.sharpley.org.uk/blog/lightdm-mir-wayland

http://mjg59.livejournal.com/136274.html

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=130799230315640

SIGs/KDE/KDMtoLightDM

Release Notes

TODO

@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 As described in many articles and discussions, '''KDM''' is nearing its end of life and it's time we decided upon the successor.
-I'm proposing to switch to '''SDDM''', which is a new project that suits our needs perfectly despite its immaturity:
+[[User:Mbriza|I]]'m proposing to switch to '''SDDM''', which is a new project that suits our needs perfectly despite its immaturity:
-It's written in ''C++11/Qt5'' (compared to the bits of '''XDM''' in '''KDM'''), compileable against Qt4, supports ''QtQuick'' theming and its upstream is quite active.
+As of July 2013, KDM's maintenance consists of bugfixes for the most painful bugs, consisting of only about 20 actual commits to the repository in last two years (excluding translation, themes and merges), adding many new features would require major changes to a lot of the code and there is no active maintainer.
+SDDM is written in ''C++11/Qt5'' (compared to the bits of '''XDM''' in '''KDM'''), compilable against Qt4, supports ''QtQuick'' theming and its upstream is quite active.
+Compared to the current ''DM'', '''KDM''', it currently lacks a few features (such as ''XDMCP'') but adds some other ones (''QtQuick'' themes) or is currently adding them (Keyboard layout switching in the greeter).
 == Benefit to Fedora ==
@@ Line 53: / Line 57: @@
 == How To Test ==
-System preparation:
+Anybody able to run KDE Plasma Workspaces as his desktop can test change.
+=== System preparation ===
 * Create some testing users
@@ Line 65: / Line 71: @@
   systemctl enable --force sddm.service
-Testing itself (basically applies to every DM/DE combination):
+=== Basic testing ===
+(basically applies to every DM/DE combination)
 . Log in as <code>test1</code>
@@ Line 84: / Line 92: @@
 . Use the ''Leave > Switch User > New Session'' dialog to log <code>test2</code> again.
+Please report any deviations from the expected usual multi-user desktop experience.
+=== Further tests ===
+Also, please test using your regular workflow, especially if your computer is used by more than a single user.
+If you're a user of some of the special authentication methods (such as a central authentication server, or a fingerprint reader), please test logging in while using them, too, and report the results to us.
 == User Experience ==
@@ Line 96: / Line 112: @@
 == Contingency Plan ==
-Continue to use '''KDM''' as the default '''KDE Spin''' ''display manager''.
+* Contingency mechanism: Continue to use '''KDM''' as the default '''KDE Spin''' ''display manager''.
+* Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
+* Blocks release? Depends on the state of the feature. If some basic functionality of a display manager is missing, we'll have to revert to KDM.
 == Documentation ==
@@ Line 102: / Line 122: @@
 http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2013/03/logging-into-plasma-workspaces-2.html
+http://www.sharpley.org.uk/node/14
+http://www.sharpley.org.uk/blog/lightdm-mir-wayland
+http://mjg59.livejournal.com/136274.html
+http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=130799230315640
 [[SIGs/KDE/KDMtoLightDM]]
 == Release Notes ==
-<!-- The Fedora Release Notes inform end-users about what is new in the release.  Examples of past release notes are here: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/ -->
+TODO
-<!-- The release notes also help users know how to deal with platform changes such as ABIs/APIs, configuration or data file formats, or upgrade concerns.  If there are any such changes involved in this change, indicate them here.  A link to upstream documentation will often satisfy this need.  This information forms the basis of the release notes edited by the documentation team and shipped with the release.
-Release Notes are not required for initial draft of the Change Proposal but has to be completed by the Change Freeze.
--->
 [[Category:ChangePageIncomplete]]

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