The thing you want most from a Login Manager is for it to start up quickly and disappear equally quickly. I have noticed lately that my Void Linux Display Manager ( LXDM) is taking a long time to startup. So I decided to try another Display Manager.
Slim is the default Display Manager in Devuan. My Devuan login screen looks like this
Very plain, not even a Devuan logo.
You can read about SLiM here.
and here
That little picturre on the Wikipedia site is its default splash screen.
You can read about installing and configuring it here. It will work with any DTE
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SLiM
and here
You can install it in any Debian based distro with just
apt-get install slim
But I wanted it in Void. That is just a bit more difficult
xbps-install slim slim-void-theme
Then we have to stop the LXDM daemon and start the slim daemon
cd /var/service
rm lxdm
As soon as I do that Void drops back to the login console ( because I just killed the lxdm daemon)
So now login as root and do
ln -s /etc/sv/slim /var/service slim
That link is the way one starts a daemon in the runit init system in Void.
The login screen comes up instantly ( because the slim daemon has started)
So I try to login, and it fails… it just goes back to the login screen, ie it does not start Xfce.
Kill it and boot in recovery mode.
Login as root
Look at /home/nevj/.xinitrc. Find it does not start up any dte. Apparently LXDM starts Xfce by some other method.
But SLiM uses .xinitrc , so I have to add the line
exec startxfce4
to the end of .xinitrc, in both /home/nevj and /root.
Also edit the file /etc/sv/slim/run
to
exec slim -d
So that it starts as a daemon
Also edit the file /etc/slim.conf
adding
current_theme slim-void-theme
So that it uses the void splash screen.
Reboot and it works
My login screen now looks like this
But
It takes just as long to startup as did LXDM.
However, there are some telltale messages scrolling across the screen while it is starting up SLiM.
The messages say that it is restoring the Xfce session.
OK, the penny drops. What has been happening is that I have been having more and more complex Xfce sessions (at least 4 windows open) and Xfce is taking longer and longer to restore these sessions, each time I boot. Nothing to do with the Display manager at all.
So I went thru all that, just to get the critical startup messages that resolved the issue. I might just keep SLiM for a while.
It is interesting that old fashioned Display Manager, which uses the classic .xinitrc
method of starting the DTE , gave me the critical messages which resolved my issue, while the more modern LXDM sat there for ages with a blank screen and told me nothing.
You can draw your own conclusion
Regards to all
Neville