So I have a new installation of fedora, which I reinstalled because gdm would freeze and prevent me from logging in and using my computer. I then noticed the same problem on the new installation. I noticed that using an older kernel worked, but system upgrades will break gdm again. I don’t want to have to never update my system. New distro? Suggestions to fix this? I ideally want an relatively bleeding edge distro.
Depends on the issue, but many issues come from misconfiguration - fixing the issue can help you understand your system, what went wrong and why, and not only fix that issue ans help you fix further issues, but also reveal things you didn’t know about the software. I find it valuable to know how things work, so I can understand what I’m using, what I need, and what I can do with it.
As an example, messing around with pulseaudio and pipewire I understood a bit more about how it works. I found out I could enable the built-in echo cancel module and get rid of virtually all of my echo when using speakers and microphone. I then later also knew how to configure multiple virtual streams, so I can separate games and voice chat from my browser, so when I record clips when playing with friends, I can have those separate. And then also configured RNNoise for systemwide noise suppression for that bit more audio clarity.
I could find instructions on how to do each of those without understanding them, but when I wanted to ensure noise suppression happens after echo cancellation, I knew what to mess with to set that up.
I understand it’s not for everybody, it’s not feasible for most people - but I see the system as a complex machine you need to operate, and while having simple controls is a good idea, understanding how the machine is built can help not just with complete breakages, but also with avoiding smaller inconveniences that come from using it in unintended ways
While I agree it can be useful, your example is in a completely different category than what we’re talking about. You wanted to have additional features most users don’t even know about, OP wants his DM to let him log in.
A far closer example is what I experienced literally yesterday when I reinstalled MX with xfce instead of KDE, and lightdm instead of sddm. After that, nix packages stopped showing up in the launcher, and lightdm couldn’t find the i3 bin. I found a few solutions, but they’re all pretty janky, so I just installed sddm instead and called it a day.
It’s simply not worth it to find workarounds for a program that doesn’t follow the conventions others do, especially when they provide the same basic functionality.
Also, knowing how to replace tools is a pretty useful skill for any Linux user.
Applications disappearing from the launcher because you changed the greeter sounds very weird… And that’s kinda what I mean. You had to give up on using this software, and instead go for an alternative, because of an issue that shouldn’t even be related.
Granted, a lot of people are probably fine with it, and it sounds like an annoying issue to debug… But it still rubs me the wrong way.
You do raise a good point about replacing software - even just in my example I neglected to mention myself switching to pipewire a couple times and figuring out how they work. Interoperability between software is valuable and knowing you can always switch out one part of your system for an alternative is indeed a useful skill - I sometimes see people complaining about things like Linux’s clipboard, or archive manager, being bad, something like that, without realizing that’s just one option you can use.
It overwrites PATH and XDG_DATA_DIRS when starting the DE, and doesn’t source them from the standard places like .profile
I didn’t have to replace it, I could’ve for example modified its config or made a launch script that sets the envars correctly. I replaced it because I think it’s the best solution, no need to deal with software that doesn’t follow conventions when the only benefit is a prettier theme.
It’s not that bad if you know what could be causing it, and when I opened .xsession-errors everything was crystal clear.
I tried to explain that to win/mac users many times. It’s weird to initially understand that everything is replaceable, and then you get overwhelmed with options.