ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.2.1, the "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

WOOOOOOONG WOOOOOOONG WOOOOOONG BI GAM!

Yes it is time for another gdm release.  This one is dedicated to all those
paranoid fools that think that they can avoid THE MAN from watching them and
keeping them down by updating their software frequently.  This is because this
release contains a number of security related fixes/features.  And thus you are
strongly advised to update.  In general a lot of paranoia and fault tolerance
has gone into this release as well.

But! The one addition I'm most proud to announce is that the login window
now includes it's own (gasp!) WINDOW MANAGER!  No it's not enlightenment
nor any 3d openGL cool new way to manage windows.  In fact it doesn't
even draw borders.  But it makes the focus stuff in gdm sane and I can
now finally hang out with all the cool kids that have written their own
windowmanager.  That's all.

(if you're tired of my stupid mail and just want to know where to get the damn
 thing, scroll down all they way to the bottom:)

Ahh, so you have no clue what gdm is?  Well if you've read this far ... let's
not get into that.  Gdm is GNOME Display Manager, the little daemon that lets
you log in to your computer.  It allows xdmcp multiple login displays and
generally is much cooler then any xdm clone out there, mostly cuz it isn't an
xdm clone to begin with. I mean heck, it's even got a graphical configurator,
so you don't have to use the command line to hose your system anymore.

News:
=====

So what is new in this release?  Mucho mucho stuff.  Here's a listing of
some of the higlights of 2.2.1:

- Keyboard navigation in the greeter (Ryan Murray)

- debian build stuff (Ian McKellar)

- Ability to set the background color/pixmap,
  now requires GdkPixbuf because of this.

- The root overlay window is gone now and we have real focus
  management.  In effect gdmlogin is a VERY simple windowmanager.

- Ability to choose a specific GNOME session, requires gnome-core 1.4.0.3

- Ability to run the configurator directly on the login screen,
  which requires a root password of course (Disabled by default)

- An editor for the Sessions directory in gdmconfig (Lee)

- Title bar can be hidden by configuration

- The icon entry is now sane with the panel icon entry hack

- If no LANG variable set gdm starts out in the DefaultLocale
  from the config file

- Now non-verbose mode is actually useful and verbose mode
  is still security safe.

- For consistency AllowRoot now works on pam setups as well,
  also a setting just for remote root logins.

- Timed login, you can set up gdm to log in a certain user on the
  first local display after a specified timeout if no one logs in
  (me, Jim Bray)

- Bunch of other fixes (me, Ryan Murray)

- Security fixes, crash fixes and an increase in general paranoia
  (me, Ryan Murray)

- More fault/bad setting tolerant all around

- Translation updates (Christian Meyer, Valek Filippov, Kjartan Maraas,
  Ole Laursen, Jarkko Ranta, Fatih Demir, Stanislav Visnovsky, Martin Norbäck,
  Christian Rose, Yuri Syrota, Christophe Merlet, Pablo Saratxaga, me,
  Ian McKellar)

Note:  Gdm2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
is now maintained by the Queen of England.  Although when she's not answering
her email, me or Lee Mellabone usually cover for her.

Note2:  Distributors, packagers.  Please, PLEASE use the standard Gnome
script when setting things up as gnome.  This makes it possible for
users to set up ~/.gnomerc for a custom startup for things like ssh and
other similar stuff.  Another thing is that if your distro doesn't have
gnome-core 1.4.0.3 you should probably disable the Gnome Chooser stuff
until that happens (you should update gnome-core anyway).  Third thing
is make sure to set up the X servers to run on the correct virtual terminals
if you start the gdm process before the other login thingies.  See the end
of the gdm.conf sample file.

Downloading:
============

Oh, you want to download this thing?  OK, send you credit card number,
your girlfriends phone number and your car keys to ...

ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/
ftp://ftp.gnome.com/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/gdm/

Have fun,

George

PS:  Now just to see if this "coding to get chicks" thing works, let's
see if I can get any dates out of this.  So are there any good looking
single gals out there reading this?

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, 
   but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.
                       -- Winston Churchill