It is usually configured to start one or
more local X servers to present a greeter dialog that collects the user??™s name and
password. Once the user is authenticated, the display manager starts some preconfigured
clients??”typically a session manager that goes on to start a window manager
and desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME. Many display managers let you
select a session type, which will in turn activate a specific desktop environment.
When the user exits the client(s), the process starts over again.
Three display managers are in common use. The biggest difference between them is
the toolkit upon which they are built:
??? GDM: GNOME Display Manager (built on GTK)
??? KDM: KDE Display Manager (Qt)
??? XDM: X Display Manager (Xt)
KDM and GDM offer some advanced features not present in the older XDM program,
such as a picture-based face browser and the ability to select the desktop environment
that will be loaded once the user authenticates.
You may be able to recognize the display manager used on your system by its appearance,
since each toolkit has a distinctive look. Alternately, you can search the process
table to see what??™s running, using the following:
$ ps -e | grep '[gkx]dm'
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