gentoo-overlay/metadata/news/2021-01-30-display-manager-init/2021-01-30-display-manager-init.en.txt

Title: New OpenRC Display Manager Initializer Scripts
Author: Aisha Tammy <gentoo@aisha.cc>
Posted: 2021-01-30
Revision: 5
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Installed: sys-apps/openrc

There has been a refactoring of the old 'xdm' init script and its
requirements from various packages into an independent package:

	gui-libs/display-manager-init

This package provides the 'display-manager' startup script for
handling your chosen display manager, without depending on
Xorg server. The old 'xdm' init script is no longer supported
and is going to be removed in the next version of xorg-server,
so it is imperative that you shift to display-manager-init.
The current package is ~ARCH and will be available for stable
users on 2nd March 2021.

To update to the new DM init scripts, you need to manually add the
package into your @world set:

	emerge -vuDU gui-libs/display-manager-init

To start using the new init scripts, either copy your
existing /etc/conf.d/xdm to /etc/conf.d/display-manager or
change the DISPLAYMANAGER variable in
/etc/conf.d/display-manager to your preferred DM:

	DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"

and remove 'xdm' from the default runlevel and add 'display-manager':

	rc-update del xdm default
	rc-update add display-manager default

The changes are complete and on the next reboot, 'display-manager'
will start your chosen DM.

To switch to the new scripts without rebooting, run the following
commands in a tty:

	rc-service xdm stop
	rc-service display-manager start