GDM and alternate authentication methods

[Ben Ford <ben kalifornia com>]

The subject came up a while ago of adding voice authentication to GDM. 
It was decided that GDM needed to be patched.

I have a different suggestion.  Keep in mind that I have not looked at 
the GDM code, so I have no way of knowing whether my proposal will be 
straightforward or a total rewrite.

I propose that we make GDM modular, in a sense, it can be the graphical 
equivilant of PAM.  We shouldn't *replace* PAM, that should still do the 
core authentication.  This is only for the graphical representation of 
the user/pass challenges or their equivilants (voice ID, retina print, 
thumbprint, DNA sample, etc).

What do you guys think of this?  I don't think it's been done for Linux 
yet, and that is one thing that keeps Linux off corporate desktops.  My 
CEO would use a Linux desktop if his thumb scanner would work on it.

-b