From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.5 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020606 Description of problem: The items 'System' and 'Session', when presented to a new user, are confusing. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Start up Redhat 2.Presented with options on GDM that are not easy intuitive 3. Expected Results: A gdm screen that I don't have to explain to new users. Additional info: gdm is great, and I love the new look, but I have had to explain multiple times to new users how to change their desktop or even shutdown or reboot. 'System' and 'Session' might be intuitive for seasoned users, but for someone fresh in the world of GNU/Linux it is confusing.
For a new user "Session" is just clearly a broken concept - the choice should not be offered at all. The choice of two desktops can't be explained in a reasonable way. Right now we are compromising the new user for the techies there. For System most likely shutdown/reboot should be toplevel buttons, not inside the System button.
I don't think session is such an advanced concept. I don't see it as just to pick between two desktops. But the ability to run a failsafe session is a very useful thing that windows has an incredibly unintuitive way to do. Also you cannot just have a session switcher inside the session since that's not very robust. If one desktop breaks, you suddenly have no way to log into a different desktop. I myself think that the desktop switching thing is done in a stupid way currently since the desk switching is done inside an Xsession script so that it works for startx as well. The startx setup should be the same as gdms and it should read the session stored by the gdm (it is planned to have this in a non-gdm specific location and have kdm do the same). I think trying to use the same scripts for gdm, xdm/kdm and startx is broken as each will be slightly broken in a different way. In any case. What would you recommend for replacement labels. Note that they cannot be too long. In the graphical greeter we can also add reboot/shutdown buttons sinc ethe theme format supports that.
Hmm, this has to be done by screenshot freeze.
This involves some code changes, instead of just a theme change as I was hoping, and the screenshot freeze is right on top of me, so will have to push to a future release. Will move to gnome.org perhaps and change it there. Basically the needed feature is a way to make a reboot/shutdown button in the graphical greeter. I agree that displaying those directly instead of "System" would be substantially better.
Nevermind, George told me how to do it. Done. (well, next build of redhat-artwork anyway)