Display Manager: What are the Login Managers in Linux?

On this occasion, after having done an extensive review of the best known and most used Desktop Environments (DE) y Window Managers (WM), we will stop at another element or component of GNU / Linux that some passionate users tend to prefer, select and / or customize in their Distros.

And this element or component of Linux is none other than the "Display Managers", or as they are known in Spanish, under the names of Home screen managers y Login managers.

Before entering the matter, we will briefly clarify the concept of each of these 3 elements to make everything clear.

Elements of a Linux OS

Desktop Environments (DE)

"A Desktop Environment is nothing more than the set of software necessary to offer every user of a certain Operating System a visual, friendly and comfortable way of interaction. That is, it is an implementation of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) arranged to provide access and configuration facilities, such as toolbars and integration between applications, with functionalities such as drag and drop, among many others.". Read more here.

Window Managers (WM)

"It is the piece of the puzzle that controls the placement and appearance of the windows. And that requires XWindows to function but not from a Desktop Environment, of obligatory form. And according to ArchLinux Official Wiki, in its section dedicated to «Windows Manager«, These are divided into 3 types, which are the following: Stacking, Tiling and Dynamics". Read more here.

Home Screen Managers (DM)

"It is a graphical interface that is displayed at the end of the boot process, instead of the default shell. There are several types of screen managers, just as there are different types of window managers and desktop environments. These managers usually provide a certain degree of customization and availability of themes with each one". Read more here.

Display Manager: Login Managers

Display Managers available

DMs can be of the type CLI (Console) o GUI (Graphics). Among those of the CLI type we can mention CDM y Getty plus other similar ones like Rungetty, Fgetty and Mingetty. While, among the best known and preferred Display Managers graphics we can mention the following:

• GNOME Display Manager (GDM): Described on its official website as a program that manages graphic display servers and manages logins of graphic users for the FROM GNOME.
• KDE Display Manager (KDM): It was the old DM of the FROM KDE4, which was based on XDM so it shared many of its configuration options. Most of these options were defined in the kdmrc.
• Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM): It is a modern DM for X11 and Wayland that aims to be fast, simple and beautiful. It is currently widely used by DE KDE Plasma, mainly because it uses modern technologies such as QtQuick, which in turn gives the designer the ability to create smooth and animated user interfaces.
• Light Display Manager (LightDM) : A very light and simple DM, which works as a daemon (service) capable of executing among many things, display servers (for example, X) where needed and login managers to allow users to choose which account user and type of session to use.
• Simple Login Manager (Slim): An old and outdated DM, but lightweight and easy to configure, which requires minimal dependencies, and is independent of Desktop Environments.
• LX Display Manager (LXDM): A simple DM specially designed for LXDE, but can be used independently of it.

There are many others, especially old, outdated or little diffused or known as: XDM, WDM MDM, and Qingy.

Conclusion

We hope this "useful little post" on «Display Managers (DM)» existing on GNU / Linux, to know a little more about them in depth, as we have been doing about the Desktop Environments (DE) and Window Managers (WM); is of great interest and utility, for the entire «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» and of great contribution to the diffusion of the wonderful, gigantic and growing ecosystem of applications of «GNU/Linux».

And for more information, always do not hesitate to visit any Online library as OpenLibra y jedit to read books (PDFs) on this topic or others knowledge areas. For now, if you liked this «publicación», don't stop sharing it with others, in your Favorite websites, channels, groups, or communities of social networks, preferably free and open as Mastodon, or secure and private like Telegram.