Fedora 21 Workstation added the ability to log in and run a Wayland session from the login screen (GDM), leaving the login screen itself running using the older X protocol. This is changing with a new feature in Fedora 22 enabling the login screen to run on Wayland by default.
For most users, there will be no visible difference between the Fedora 21 login screen running X, and the Fedora 22 login screen running Wayland. The goal in Fedora is to progress to the point of replacing X with Wayland wherever it appears, and the login screen is a vital first step towards this goal. The reasoning behind this is that the login screen is sufficiently isolated and contained, making it an ideal first place to use Wayland by default.
Even though some video device drivers — i.e. the proprietary Nvidia drivers — do not support the Wayland stack yet, you will still have access to the log in screen. In these cases, the login screen will fall back to using the older X protocol version seamlessly. Futhermore, if the Wayland version of the login screen does encounter an issue and crashes, it will also fall back to the X protocol version seamlessly.
If you want to check out this new feature in action, the best way to see it is by downloading and installing the newly released Alpha of Fedora 22.
Login screen in Fedora 22 Alpha running on Wayland
Krystian
Glad there will be fall back option. Previously selecting Wayland for session – I’ve had great login screen loop (when I wanted to log in, sessions returned to login screen). And it was on Intel APU. If still this issue exist – i will not be able even to see login screen 🙂
Darragh McCurragh
Indeed, no fallback solution always gives me the “creeps”. Esp. in stressing situations and where some measure of security depends on it we should always, in technical systems, be allowed to revert to what we were comfortable with “before today” 😉
Tim
So is GDM its own Wayland compositor now or is it a client running on top of Mutter-Wayland?
Ryan Lerch
AFAIK, GDM uses mutter
Emmanuele
GDM just spawns GNOME Shell in a locked down, “greeter” mode.
aim
Hope there will be “old fashioned” version with user prompt and passwor prompt – for better phy security…
Ryan Lerch
There are settings available to turn this on:
http://current.workingdirectory.net/posts/2012/remove-users-from-gdm/
leki
Please add this option to gnome settings gui – privacy.
Rahul Sundaram
You will have to file a RFE in GNOME Bugzilla.
Alain Courville
Nvidia need a serious update because the actual Nvidia driver slow down my computer and i use Gallium and everything is very fast
English is not my native tougue
M
Here is a thought, how about a way to finally change the freaking clock to am-pm in the lockscreen.
Ryan Lerch
The Lock Screen does change to AM/PM if you set the time display to AM/PM in your user settings. (well it does it on Fedora 21 for me.)
jkjaskda
am/pm is freaky.
M
Or better yet have the lockscreen display the same settings, icons and everything as the desktop does. Just like Android or iPhone. Why is it even separate to begin with?
Bob Ness
Because there’s more than one user, and different users may have different settings.
But there should be a button for system admins that says “Apply globally” that changes the defaults for the system, as well as the login screen’s settings.
Leslie Satenstein
Within Gnome interface itself, for what I use, I can’t tell the difference between Wayland and the legacy Gnome. Well done!!! But..
I use the Canadian French keyboard and for the logon screen Wayland forgets that it is not the US keyboard that is installed. So. I can’t use special characters such as é or É or £ as part of my password as these don’t appear on the standard US keyboard.
Jeff Sadowski
Can you VNC to it yet?
I need to be able to VNC to it so that I can control it better.
Synergy never really worked the way I want. I always fell back to vnc with the added benefit of zooming in to read things better than I can on the TV (Its clear I would just need to be closer which is awkward). I also like seeing if it is being used from time to time on the go so I know if I can reboot it when I need to.
Jeff Sadowski
How did you do a screen capture? I didn’t think that was supported by Wayland?
Ryan Lerch
This is a screenshot of a VM running the Fedora 22 Alpha.
42yeah
Wayland is still buggy and it needs more improvement.
To beat X, I think you should fix TONS of bugs first
I used Wayland once and that was a terrible experience. Really terrible experience. Really.
shuyi
Is it me or is it the case that everything looks more detailed and sharper in wayland ? but unfortunately, my touchscreen and touch pad doesn’t work under wayland …
Leslie Satenstein
The logon screen works for me, mostly. I use a keyboard other than US English. I set up Fedora with my keyboard choice, but after a reboot, the US English is now the default.
Leslie Satenstein
I hope with Gnome taking over the logon screen, that the MOTD (message of the day) functionality will return.
What is MOTD for?
At logon time or on the logon screen, we would like to leave a message to all users. For example, “System is going off-line for reboot at 8pm!”. Much better to be on the screen than with a yellow sticky note pasted to the frame of the monitor.
By the way, a Null MOTD is present in /etc
Matthew Miller
Coming from a university background, I see the utility. It might be even nicer, though, to have an app which pushes these messages into the notification framework, so that users can get them at any time, not just if the MOTD happen to be there when they log in.
Matthew Miller
But anyway, the login screen is really a locked-down version of GNOME Shell. I don’t know for sure but I assume that it’s possible to run extensions in that environment, and an extension which displays the MOTD doesn’t seem that hard…..
Leslie Satenstein
Hi Matthew,
I enjoyed your last talk about Fedora that you presented earlier this month.
Message of the Day
We had motd in earlier Fedora releases, When the idea was to ditch X for Gnome, back with F16 or F15, motd disappeared. It is ever so convenient. I don’t think it is too hard to do. Currently at the bottom of the greater panel for logon presents a static file. It shows Fedora as the system title or logo.
That image is text superimposed on a most boring dull background (Fed 7, was the best greeter panel ever). Why not allow the motd to superimpose over a blank panel and run a short application to recreate that panel we see at each boot.
At a minimum, I can set a flag within /usr/local/etc and if it is present(or set), present the motd to via the user’s logon script.
twohot
The login screen shows up alright on my machine but that’s where the login process stops. After typing in my password, I’m thrown back to the login screen again (cyclic) and there is no fallback experience here. CTRL+ALT+F2 gives me a classic freeze/hang. No error messages. I suspect Optimus graphics technology (I have intel and nvidia on this machine). I tested F22 on machines spotting AMD cards … smooth login experience.
Matthew Miller
Are you using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or Nouveau?
twohot
Nouveau of course.
I forgot to mention that I can get the graphical desktop from level-3 with startx (75% success on that route so far). So this is looking like a graphic card driver issue
Zan Lynx
I think it might be the combined Intel/Nvidia because I have the same problem as you, twohot.
Wayland sort of works but X does not. It immediately crashes X when I try to start it from GDM.
I have a Dell m3800 with integrated Intel and an addon Nvidia Quadro.
Wayland, or maybe Gnome/Wayland on a 4K display has all sorts of scaling issues.
Shiba
Is there any way to disable this and go straight do X/GDM? Wayland doesn’t work here but it takes almost 10 more seconds at boot for GDM to recover and finally start on X. This is really annoying 🙁
Maint1941
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_Desktop_Beat
Tony
Have you actually tried this?
I have built a clean setup from F22 Alpha and the documented way of disabling Wayland does not work…..QED there’s no way to run vnc remote desktops. Bug has been filed over a week ago and no response so far and postings to Fedoraforum get no meaningful response.
So at the moment F22 has no working remote desktop functionality (not client/server) and no rollback to allow it.
Not inspiring confidence.