[systemd-devel] Rethinking getty and fast user switching

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Jan Engelhardt at 20/02/12 23:40 did gyre and gimble:
> 
> On Monday 2012-02-20 18:57, Dax Kelson wrote:
>> On Mon, 2012-02-20 at 17:54 +0100, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>>
>>> What is currently implemented is more like this:
>>>
>>> 1. On systems with graphical login: tty1 is always the DM
>>>
>>> 2. On systems without graphical login: tty1 is always a getty
>>
>> [...] I teach Linux classes in rooms full of students and this is a
>> constant annoyance compared to the old deterministic days.
> 
> The more reason to leave :0 on vt7 :)

I don't think so. People have said this to me before, but I really
cannot think of any reason why this is a good idea other than "because
that's how it's done now". Think of a newbie or similar, it's just not
intuitive at all to start numbering from 7... I mean for them a
graphical UI is all they know, so why does it start from 7 at all?

This is why I was proposing an adaptive change. For all the people who
run servers and use multi-user.target (aka runlevel 3), they certainly
are fairly vocal about keeping 1, 2, 3 etc for text.

But this doesn't really serve any purpose on a graphical system. That's
why when using a computer set up for graphics, it's IMO far better to
have the login manager popup when needed and ask you if you want to log
in in a nice graphical way.

> Speaking of "finding the X server -- or console for that matter",
> how about allocating gettys from vt1 (not *tty*1) upwards,
> and X sessions from vt12 downwards?

My argument against this is that we're catering for the status quo and
not making the experience as nice as possible for the those less familiar.

Now I fully appreciate the reverse of this suggestion won't fly with the
existing folks running servers etc, which is again why I said the login
prompt shown should be adaptive to the current target. That way everyone
gets an appropriate experience to how their machine is configured which
I think is, on balance, the best possible outcome.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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