Questions tagged [display-manager]

A system's display manager (DM) is a graphical login manager. It is the program that starts the X server and user sessions, presenting the user with a graphical login screen (greeter). As of 11.10, the default display manager is LightDM; previously, GNOME Display Manager (GDM) was used.

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How do I disable X at boot time so that the system boots in text mode?

Is it possible to disable X at boot time? I'm setting up a server so it would be nice if it wouldn't load the graphical interface every time I boot.
Olivier Lalonde's user avatar
129 votes
5 answers
362k views

What is gdm3, kdm, lightdm? How to install and remove them?

What is gdm3, kdm, lightdm? How to install and remove and repair them? Can anyone explain in details?
Shateel's user avatar
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112 votes
1 answer
153k views

What's the difference between GDM and LightDM?

What is the difference between GDM and LightDM? How can one switch between them. I mean if I have selected LightDM during installation process, will I be able switch to GDM?
user7044's user avatar
  • 3,871
73 votes
7 answers
326k views

How do I switch from LightDM to GDM?

How do I switch from the default display manager (Lightdm) to the older display manager (GDM)?
Ron Belcher's user avatar
60 votes
10 answers
48k views

How do I save/remember last-used window position and size for applications?

When I log in Ubuntu, I would like all windows opened at previous session (terminal and Firefox mainly) to be re-opened automatically at the same size and position. How to proceed?
Eric's user avatar
  • 771
58 votes
4 answers
161k views

Is gdm3 preferred to lightdm?

I have hard a hard time finding good information on the performance difference between display managers on Ubuntu (specifically between lightdm and gdm3). With Ubuntu switching to Gnome, I would ...
Startec's user avatar
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45 votes
5 answers
212k views

Ubuntu 18.04 stuck in boot after starting Gnome Display Manager on Intel Graphics

I ran into a problem this week, where I couldn't find a solution to. Everytime I start Ubuntu, it boots nominally, until it reaches "starting Gnome Display Manager" where the Konsole gets stuck and ...
Lukas's user avatar
  • 451
43 votes
3 answers
74k views

How can I make LightDM the default display manager?

I have LightDM installed and can start it with sudo start lightdm. But at boot, GDM is still the default. How can change this so LightDM is loaded automatically at boot instead of GDM?
Anders Feder's user avatar
38 votes
5 answers
86k views

Can't switch to gdm3 using sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3

I was looking for a way to switch to gdm3 from lightdm, when I found this answer. So I tried to apply it, and entered sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3, then a selection screen appeared with 2 options: gdm3 ...
Tooniis's user avatar
  • 1,572
24 votes
1 answer
44k views

How to change display's position from command line?

How can I use the command prompt to do get the setup shown below? Edit: I need the secondary display to be located to the left and half-way to the top of the primary display, as shown above. The ...
Eduardo's user avatar
  • 343
21 votes
3 answers
60k views

Make KDM the default display manager

I'm giving KDE another try - so far so good. I installed everything using apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. During the installation it asked me which login manager to use and I chose LightDM - however, ...
Sergey's user avatar
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21 votes
1 answer
53k views

How do I make GDM the default display manager?

I believe my question says what I am trying to achieve. Steps I tried to make gdm my default display manager: sudo dpkg-reconfigure than select gdm as my default. Edit /etc/X11/default-display-...
RanRag's user avatar
  • 545
20 votes
2 answers
66k views

Wayland in Ubuntu 20.04 (IntelGPU)

I sadly do not have the choice of starting a Gnome with Wayland session when logging in (no gear icon showing). Using a Thinkpad with integrated Intel GPU, WaylandEnable option in /etc/gdm3/custom....
Thilo's user avatar
  • 313
18 votes
1 answer
6k views

Why use a Display manager?

I'm currently trying to free as much memory as possibile because I'm using my laptop for scientific simulations. One of the things I made is disable gdm and using login+startx to start GNOME session. ...
Juan Sebastian Totero's user avatar
17 votes
5 answers
37k views

How to take screenshot of an X11 based GUI from a text terminal (such as tty1)?

I tried using DISPLAY=:0 import -window root "$HOME/Pictures/screenshot.png" (import is part of the ImageMagick suite), but that just displays a black screen. I want to do this as I wanted to ...
Yatharth Agarwal's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
16k views

Difference between alt+tab and alt+escape

On my GNOME + Ubuntu system, both Alt+Enter and Alt+Escape+ switch between windows. What exactly is the difference, if any, between them?
Elliot Gorokhovsky's user avatar
12 votes
6 answers
35k views

How to log out with a command in a gnome-less environment?

I installed various window managers (Awesome, dwm, etc.) from which I am not able to log out back to the login screen (gnome-session) in order to switch to another window manager. I need to reboot to ...
octosquidopus's user avatar
12 votes
6 answers
7k views

Why does LightDM only show a custom wallpaper on the login screen if I have selected one of the default wallpapers? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How do I add customized wallpapers so they appear in the dynamic unity greeter? LightDM only changes wallpapers if I have selected one of the default wallpapers. If I choose ...
Mauricio's user avatar
  • 121
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

How do I make the login screens and boot splashes match when installing different desktops?

I wanted to try out different desktop environments so I installed XFCE, KDE, GNOME, etc on top of Unity in Ubuntu 12.04 After a while I decided that I didn't like those other DEs and would stick to ...
Kshitiz Sharma's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
10k views

/etc/X11/Xsession & LightDM

I'm running Lubuntu 14.10. It seems that LighDM invokes /etc/X11/Xsession only if directed to so by the user. In fact there is no shadow of it in lightdm-session wrapper. startx command line (wrapper ...
Giuseppe Di Chiacchio's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
15k views

Which display manager is used by default in Ubuntu GNOME 16.04?

I can't find this information, and while trying to install the nvidia drivers for my laptop, I got a message explaining that I had 2 display managers installed, and that seemed strange.
michael_bitard's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
10k views

Black screen problem in Ubuntu 22.04

I am using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on my Dell laptop with [intel core i3 processor, amd-64 architecture, inbuilt graphics]. Recently I have updated my laptop to Ubuntu 22.04 from 20.04. After installing, it ...
Pravesh Kumar Sharma's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
25k views

How can I disable all display managers?

When I boot my computer, I want to be greeted by a text terminal, like TTY. This way I want to be able to log in and type startx to start the GUI. If I could get TTY to start on boot instead of a ...
tjespe's user avatar
  • 1,338
8 votes
2 answers
10k views

Please explain the parameters 'noexpose' and 'cycle' in xset

I have been trying for a long time to prevent my screen from blanking every 20 minutes. I understand there are many interlocking layers of applications that can do this and it is not straightforward ...
cxrodgers's user avatar
  • 722
8 votes
1 answer
24k views

How to use Xfce4-display-settings terminal commands?

What I want is a terminal command that would activate internal display in case it is de-activated in Xfce. (Then, I could run this command by a script+shortkey and get a solution to this problem). The ...
user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
5k views

Turn off display in Ubuntu on Wayland

I recently installed a program on my Ubuntu 20.04 machine that needs Wayland instead of X11 to work. I also frequently used the command xset dpms force off to turn of my display. However, this command ...
Chaitanya Gambali's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
10k views

Running multiple monitors with different DPI

I look thoroughly and I saw that this kind of question was not solved before in the AskUbuntu community. My problem is pretty simple and am sure a lot of Ubuntu users have it: Simply explained, ...
Кристиян Кацаров's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
29k views

Which display manager should I choose when installing Gnome 3 [closed]

When I was trying to install Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 16.04, just to get an experience, I got the below message. That dilemma forced me to search the site and found this and many others.Which display manager ...
Nuwan Thisara's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
10k views

How to start gnome wayland desktop from lightdm?

I installed Gnome 3.24 (gnome-shell and gnome-desktop-environment) on a previous Ubuntu 17.04 (Unity) installation. I can start gnome Wayland session from display manager gdm3, but not from Lightdm. ...
mxdsp's user avatar
  • 3,818
8 votes
1 answer
3k views

Screen turning black after switching users

I've create three users on my computer (admin + standard users), and whenever I switch between users, my screen is turned off. I have Ubuntu 16.10, and I switch users using the account menu on the ...
Kobi's user avatar
  • 315
8 votes
0 answers
3k views

How can I split a vertical monitor into up and down?

I have two monitors. One is horizontal and one is vertical. I like to split my vertical monitor into up and down, so that I can have two windows on it, one on the upper part and one on the lower part. ...
SaTa's user avatar
  • 996
7 votes
3 answers
15k views

gpu-manager overwrites xorg.conf

I have recently installed the NVIDIA drivers on my Xubuntu 15.10 machine but I had to remove them due to improper multi-monitor setup. Everything went fine, except for the fact that gpu-manager seems ...
adrianp's user avatar
  • 261
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

How does the Display Server - Display Manager - Window Manager structure exactly work?

I would Like to know what exactly each does and how they are layered/structured or interrelated to each other, their functions, their interdependence, their communication protocols and when and why ...
Nirmik's user avatar
  • 7,868
7 votes
2 answers
6k views

After "security update" to 4.15.0-24-generic #26-Ubuntu screen shows log content not login [duplicate]

Ubuntu Bionic 18.04 SoftwareUpdater this morning installed updates including a new kernel version 4.15.0-24-generic #26-Ubuntu. Now when the system boots the screen displays the content of some log ...
msc's user avatar
  • 215
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

How do I develop my own display manager?

For some reasons we need to create our own display manager. We need some very special biometric identification of users. If any one can give me some links to documentation or standarts or any ...
Denis Eltsov's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
7k views

How to generate ~/.config/monitors.xml file from a script?

I'm writing a script that set ups multi-head configurations, it generates an xorg.conf file and runs an xrandr command to setup the displays. This works fine until the computer reboots and logs back ...
John Conder's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
5k views

What's the difference between desktop managers and display managers? [duplicate]

Desktop manager examples: Gnome, Unity. Display manager examples: GDM, LightDM. What is the split in responsibilities of these two types of managers? What functions do they each provide? And are ...
simplename's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
6k views

How can I find out my greeter name [duplicate]

I'm new to Linux. Is there a way to find out the name of my greeter (where you sign in) or whether I have many installed (a way to find apps by function: greeters, text editors, terminals, etc...)?
QwertY's user avatar
  • 61
6 votes
2 answers
37k views

Unable to share entire screen

I have Ubuntu 20.04 and I tried DWM window manager with the XDM display manager for a weekend but I didn't have the time to adapted to my style because I started classes at the university again. I ...
Santiago Guiral's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
7k views

List all available display managers

How can I get the list of all the display managers installed in my Ubuntu laptop from the terminal?
M.Tarun's user avatar
  • 5,001
5 votes
1 answer
15k views

Where does LXRandr save its display configurations?

It looks like LXRandr can save configurations. But where are they saved and in what form? (I was thinking about activating them by shortkey.)
user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
6k views

Strange graphics issues such as flickering application windows and inconsistent display lagging [duplicate]

My computer was acting really strange; the windows were flickering and parts of windows of different applications were partly appearing at random places. Also when I was typing, my computer seemed to ...
Ricoter's user avatar
  • 293
5 votes
2 answers
7k views

Reconfigure the display-manager non-interactively

I am trying to change the default display-manager on a Ubuntu 18.04.1 in a non-interactive way to do this in a script. Everything works as expected when using dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 dpkg-...
Thomas's user avatar
  • 6,223
5 votes
1 answer
4k views

Cannot enable Unity Plugin in ccsm

I've tried enabling the Unity Plugin as described in this answer (https://askubuntu.com/a/717860/235839) (and several others). Nothing changes. When I try it again, I find that the plugin's ...
jvriesem's user avatar
  • 196
5 votes
1 answer
543 views

Why doesn't tty7 show a prompt with no display manager?

When I drop to tty1-tty6 through Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] it shows a prompt, for obvious reasons (it's supposed to). However, if I kill my display server, and thus X, through something like sudo service gdm ...
strugee's user avatar
  • 1,092
5 votes
2 answers
29k views

How to check if the X11 display manager is installed?

I recently had some problems on sharing the screen on zoom, and I found out that disabling Wayland does the trick. It worked fine for my computer, but when I tried doing this on another computer, I ...
Aditzu's user avatar
  • 221
5 votes
2 answers
318 views

mdmsetup returns exit status 1

I'd like to install and use mdm over lightdm with Cinnamon. I've installed mdm, but gksudo mdmsetup just opens a dialogue requesting authentication, then immediately exits with code 1. There's ...
cat's user avatar
  • 1,672
5 votes
2 answers
13k views

Can't activate "mirror display"

I have Ubuntu 12.04 on a Dell latitude E6410, I have a problem when using the VGA output I always have dual monitor and can't switch on the "mirror display" toggle under systems setting/displays. It's ...
Nemo Peeters's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
30k views

Xubuntu 14.04: Screen Resolution 1440x900, no xorg.conf or lightdm.conf

So I'm quite confused now by the fact that I read a lot of different solutions for a Screen Resolution problem, but none of them apply to my case (I think). So I'm running a Xubuntu 14.04 x64 and ...
Noxious Inc.'s user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
12k views

Different display and window managers for Ubuntu and how to install them

On surfing articles on Ubuntu, I came across posts for installing different desktop environments in Ubuntu. That got me thinking about different display & window managers they use and I made a ...
VedVals's user avatar
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