display manager - lightdm, gdm3, sddm or no display manager (startx)

[Patrick]

Whonix 15 was using lightdm. It was removed due to autologin heisenbug. [1] [2] [3]

Therefore Whonix 16 is using gdm3. It is also a good choice because it supports wayland (and fits with Gnome, which Whonix might be ported to, depending on many things such as feasibility, resource use, please use a dedicated forum thread (none might exist yet, see [4]).

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[1] autologin not work sometimes · Issue #210 · canonical/lightdm · GitHub

[2] autologin is not working every time · Issue #191 · canonical/lightdm · GitHub

[3] Heisenbug - Wikipedia

[4] Search results for 'wayland' - Whonix Forum

[HulaHoop]

@Patrick

it supports wayland

If this is doable during this release cycle, then it would exceed any other benefit of switching away including reduced resource usage.

[Patrick]

@HulaHoop

If this is doable during this release cycle,

Dunno. I’ll know when I get to it. Depends on how many / any issues caused by wayland.

[Patrick]

`Session=` autodetection broken / auto detect desktop environment

[Patrick]

no login prompt / getty not started on tty1 anymore in Whonix 16 (Debian bullseye based)

There is no issue with rads. If there is “not enough RAM”, rads does not attempt to start gdm3. There could have been a bug in theory if rads supported only gdm but not gdm3. Then with “not enough RAM”, gdm3 would have still been started, because rads might have missed to inhibit autostart of gdm3. But that’s not happening here. The root cause is that Virtual Console tty1 is missing by default which is a systemd issue: For first boot into Whonix CLI: The workaround until virtual conso…

[Patrick]

Whonix-KVM after some time of inactivity request User login - unwanted automatic logout

[test.cleaned] This is intentional? (in WS & GW)

[Patrick]

display manager requirements:

• in packages.debian.org
• no dependency hell
• wayland support
• autologin supported without heisenbug
• no hardcoding of desktop environment required in config for autologin

Not easy to find…

[Patrick]

gdm3:

• in packages.debian.org
• wayland support
• dependency hell, depends on gnome-session which depends on evolution-data-server
• stable autologin
• complicated to configure disable auto logout - Configure automatic logout
• bug: Whonix-KVM after some time of inactivity request User login - unwanted automatic logout

sddm:

• in packages.debian.org
• no dependency hell
• wayland support
• autologin supported
• hardcoded Session=xfce config required (would be a technical debt making porting to other desktop environments harder)

lightdm:

• in packages.debian.org
• no dependency hell
• wayland support
• failed autologin heisenbug
  • fixable using pam_autologin?
  • fixable using Debian -- Details of package lightdm-autologin-greeter in bullseye?

[Patrick]

do not hardcode session in config file

[Patrick]

Debian bug report:
lightdm-autologin-greeter: out-comment defunct autologin-user=AUTOLOGIN-USER-NOT-CONFIGURED in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/lightdm-autologin-greeter.conf

[Patrick]

Yet another option might be not using any display manager and instead use startx (or its wayland equivalent).

For that purpose RAM Adjusted Desktop Starter - Kicksecure (rads) could be modified.
(Whonix is based on Kicksecure.)
If no display manager is installed and if there is enough RAM and if startx is available, start it.
(Configurable.)

How about Whonix-Host?
(Would equally apply to Kicksecure host.)

• Pre-configured style: Should have display manager and no default autologin? Also for logon password at every boot required.
• Minimal style: autologin using startx by default. Display manager installation, logon password setup should be left to the user?

Display manager login password has limited use anyhow when already using Full Disk Encryption - Kicksecure → Protection against Physical Attacks.