Since I am concentrating on the desktop aspect of Linux, ease of use is more important than security. Whenever a system’s security is increased, there is a reduction in its user-friendliness. One of the best example for this is the login screen in Linux.
If you are using Linux as a desktop system, there is no need for login – you are the primary user on your system. In such cases, the login screen is just a waste of time. And as I am using my system as a desktop system, one of the first things I do after installing Linux is enable the ‘Auto-Login’ feature.
Softwares
There are 2 main software for handling logins – kdm and gdm. KDM manages logins for KDE and GDM manages the same task for Gnome. If you are using gdm, you need to configure just that.
Configuring GDM
- KMenu > Administration > Login Screen
- OR Run command ‘gdmsetup’
- Security Tab
- Make sure that the ‘Enable Automatic Login’ is on
- Choose the default user from the drop down.
Configuring KDM
- Launch Control Center
- System Administration > Login Manager
- Press the ‘Administrator Mode’ button and enter the root password.
- Switch to the ‘Convenience’ tab
- Make sure that the ‘Enable Auto-Login’ is checked.
- Choose the default user from the ‘User’ drop down.
I don’t think it makes much sense to have gdm or kdm run just to log in (at least from the minimalist point of view–there’s several seconds boot time anyway, and if you don’t use Gnome or Kde, megabytes worth of unnecessary dependancies, plus more wasted RAM…)
How can you auto-login without them?
You may want to narrow this down a bit, you aren’t going to find “gdmsetup” on Arch Linux for example.
http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2009/04/30/autologin-linux-console-mode/