SDDM version 0.16.0 is now available for download

Oct 9, 2017 13:17 GMT  ·  By

Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM), which is used by numerous GNU/Linux distributions as default graphical login manager for both X11 and Wayland windowing systems, was updated today to version 0.16.0.

The main change of the SDDM 0.16.0 release is the implementation of configuration directories, along with a central configuration file that should be installed by default under /etc/sddm.conf. This was done to avoid situations where SDDM might end up broken after an upgrade due to the existence of mixed end user and OEM options.

"SDDM configuration usually consists of user set options and distro defined options. For example, a distro might want to specify a custom theme, but the user's autostart name can't come from the distro. Using the same config file leads to problems when upgrading," explains developer Pier Luigi Fiorini.

With this release, SDDM will automatically load the configuration file from /etc/sddm.conf for compatibility. But it can also scan all files in both the /usr/lib/sddm/sddm.conf.d (recommended for OEMs) and /etc/sddm.conf.d (recommended for end users) directories in alphabetical order.

GNOME Keyring now unlocked at login

In addition to the new configuration directories, SDDM 0.16.0 adds a number of other interesting changes, among which we can mention the ability to unlock GNOME Keyring at login, support for the 2nd generation ConsoleKit framework for defining and tracking users, as well as login sessions and seats.

SDDM 0.16.0 is also capable of reusing existing sessions, allows for non-latin characters in theme settings, supports the fish shell in both X11 and Wayland sessions, and allows changing of drop-down menu's color. A Hindi translation was added as well in this release, and the Swedish and French ones were updated.

A bunch of bugs were squashed as well in SDDM 0.16.0, whose source tarball you can download right now from our website if you want to compile it on your favorite GNU/Linux distro. However, if you're using SDDM as default login manager, we recommend updating to version 0.16.0 via official repos.

SDDM 0.16.0 Changelog