[794] in athena10
Re: Changes to debathena-gdm-config
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Abbott)
Thu Jan 8 14:42:41 2009
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 14:41:52 -0500 (EST)
From: Tim Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@mit.edu>
cc: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>, Geoffrey Thomas <geofft@mit.edu>,
athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <1231443551.29119.8.camel@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0901081439310.26091@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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Why not just rename the "Run Xclient Script" session to e.g. "Athena" or
"Athena standard session" or something similarly unambiguous?
-Tim Abbott
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009, Bill Cattey wrote:
> The problem created goes like this:
>
> The current session choices on offer from the Athena 10 Login greeter
> are:
>
> Last session
> 1. Run Xclient script
> 2. GNOME
> 3. Secure Remote Connection
> Failsafe GNOME
> Failsafe Terminal
>
> To someone unfamiliar with the nitty gritty of how sessions actually are
> implemented, there is much room for users hurting themselves by making
> the wrong choice.
>
> The least toxic of these choices is #3. It's merely useless. The reason
> why it shows up is that it's picked up by what got installed by default
> in /usr/share/xsessions. Choice #2 is also picked up from there.
>
> I classify choice #3 as toxic because it looks to a naive user like it
> is the session to pick. As a naive user myself, I saw, "Last session"
> and decided that after I'd run Failsafe, that I needed to select a
> session to stop being logged in Failsafe. Knowing I needed to run
> GNOME, I picked #2, broke things, and never really clued into how,
> "You're just supposed to know to Run Xclient Script".
>
> Short answer to your question: It seems like the simplest way to avoid
> picking up session types that will help users screw themselves is to
> leave them out of the search path on Athena Workstation.
>
> Does this clarify?
