[RFC] Merging LightDM into KDE Workspaces

[David Edmundson]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Daniel Nicoletti <dantti12 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Though I have nothing against this move, I'd like to ask a dumb
> question (well maybe not that dumb):
> Since lightDM-kde greeter is (AFAIK) pretty much just an interface
> for lightDM, and since I myself find the user interface much more
> user friendly than KDM's one, isn't it possible to remove the GUI
> bits from KDM and have it to use the same interface as when using
> lightDM?
> Surely it isn't a trivial change, but the benefit of having one unified
> greeter interface would help people doing themes, I imagine distros
> having to create two different themes the both UIs. Thus making
> KDM an alternative backend for lightDM-kde.
>
Problem is the code doesn't contain _just_ a greeter, there's also the
configuration KCM which is designed for editing the lightdm config
file.

Theoretically you could abstract them both, but the two have a
different concepts of what is in the backend and what is in the front
end differs, so it would be rather messy, and it would make the KCM
for KDM _even more_ complicated with three different front ends to
sort out, and fixing that was half the reason I started this project.

So whilst it's possible, there's nothing the KDM backend provides that
LightDM does not, so I'm not seeing any real gain.

I expect a distro to chose one or the other, I can't imagine them
wanting to support both, it's not something most users would want to
care about or chose between.

It's not a dumb question, but I don't think it would provide any gain.

Dave