Arch Linux Installer Update Allows More Control Over Parallel Downloads, Ly

[gfunk]

Ly doesnt seem very well supported? A lot of people have this issue where logs flow onto the Ly login screen:

logs flows into login screen (bug/feature request) · Issue #537 · fairyglade/ly · GitHub

also agree they should make a pure Wayland mode

Having an "exec sway" statement in your .profile doesn't sound to arcane to me.

I had some bug where if i exec sway or dbus run session sway, my sway profile doesnt get loaded and none of the keyboard shortcuts work, this was on Void so i guess its probably because systemd is missing

[Daktyl198]

When I ran a minimalist setup using Sway, Ly was the perfect display manager. I'm so glad I ended up finding it. I don't use it anymore, but it's still one of my favorite. It's just so no-nonsense, and so fast.

[Gabbb]

I love Ly's visuals, but it's possibly too dumb as a greeter/display manager to be useful to me. The problem is that Ly is running on TTY and if you have a complex multimonitor/gpu setup it will probably never display on the monitor you want it to & also there is the issue that it did not even start KDE for me the last time I tried.
Then again since I switched to an AMD gpu recently, perhaps I should try again! TTY is working better now at least..

[Sonadow]

A display manager does more than just a login. Lockscreen, session management, user management, language selection, autostart, touchscreen compat, ... and making everything configurable per GUI.
Sure you can do most of it somehow manually in the terminal but my next question is, why do you even need a desktop environment? You can basically start an xserver with one application from the console.

Not everything is configurable in a display manager. Try adding some env options to a session in /usr/share/wayland-sessions and see that session disappear from the display manager's list of options, even if that same option successfully launches the GUI from a TTY.

[Anux]

A display manager does more than just a login. Lockscreen, session management, user management, language selection, autostart, touchscreen compat, ... and making everything configurable per GUI.
Sure you can do most of it somehow manually in the terminal but my next question is, why do you even need a desktop environment? You can basically start an xserver with one application from the console.

[Joe2021]

Great idea. You just broke any kind of remote login completely. And when sway breaks or is uninstalled, local login is now broken as well.

I included a link to the page where it is documented, but you did not read it, hence I copy&paste it:

if [ -z "${WAYLAND_DISPLAY}" ] && [ "${XDG_VTNR}" -eq 1 ]; then
exec sway
fi​

Nothing breaks with this condition.

[Anux]

I tried to use the arch installer a few months ago but it was just buggy as hell. If you need just a basic desktop install with standard settings it is really great and fast but once you start selecting uncommon options or dare to make your own partition layout it will just crash on install.
But who uses arch for a standard desktop? If you want that there are a million distros that do it much better and easier. With Arch you want to make custom stuff and the installer is useless there.
BTW is there any official documentation on how to setup custom partition layout so that the archinstaller recognizes it? I couldn't find any docs for it. The arch forum is useless, they just put you in a separate sub and ignore you.

The idea of an automated installerscript is cool but for now it's the old research, type, research, type, ... and you still forget some small detail.

[archkde]

Sooo... just log in to TTY and enter "sway" on the console?

Because that's what I do but with Plasma / labwc and that's why I am still wondering for what a display manager is for it it's just a graphical launcher with extra dependencies

Yes, exactly, it's just a graphical launcher. Many people like that.

[Sonadow]

I would be a lot more interested in Ly if could start up in Wayland mode and have no dependencies on X.

[Sonadow]

Okay, could somebody please ELI5 what a display manager is necessary for? Why does it exist? Is this some kind of relict from the X times, where the display manager starts the X server, then logs the user in to the window manager like Plasma, etc., so upon logout the same X server could keep on running until the display manager closes and the machine turns off?

Gnome needs to be started from GDM in order for the lock screen / lock session function to be usable. Without it, Gnome cannot be locked.