A display manager is the program that presents the graphical login screen and starts the user's session after authentication. Which three of the following are display managers? (Choose three.)
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 106. User interfaces and desktops medium
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The options
Choose 3.
Not correct Xfce
Not a display manager. Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment: a panel, file manager, window manager and settings tools that make up the session you get after logging in.
Correct LightDM
A display manager. LightDM is a lean, desktop-agnostic login manager whose greeter is a separate, swappable program from the daemon itself, which is why different spins present very different login screens on the same LightDM.
Correct XDM
A display manager. XDM is the original X Display Manager shipped with X itself, offering a plain login prompt and no desktop integration.
Not correct Mutter
Not a display manager. Mutter is GNOME's window manager and compositor, started inside an already-authenticated session.
Correct GDM
A display manager. GDM is the GNOME Display Manager, the default login screen on GNOME-based distributions.
Why
The display managers LPI expects you to recognise are XDM, KDM (the historic KDE one, since replaced by SDDM), GDM and LightDM. All of them start the X server or Wayland compositor, draw the login greeter, authenticate through PAM and then launch the chosen session. Keep them distinct from desktop environments (GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXDE) and from window managers (Mutter, KWin, Openbox), which run after login.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 106.2
- What it says
- Awareness of display managers such as XDM, KDM, GDM and LightDM.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 106 and space the ones you get wrong.