1

When one locks the screen under Windows, it is redirected to the same screen as in the login. Under Linux, a program is run that "captures" all the mouse and keyboard events. While xcreensaver does the job very nicely, the default one for gnome sometimes has a delay of several seconds between the exit of the screen saver animation and the lock of the screen (I haven't submitted such a bug yet, and I don't know if it is only in my machine or if it's a more generalized problem). Regardless of the nature of the problem, I was wondering if there is a cleaner, more robust way to lock the screen.

The implementation I was thinking of, would actually log the user out and take him back to the gdm screen. The programs being run as daemons could be kept running at a higher hierarchy level, and the gui programs could simply be paused? Also the current RAM memory could be dumped somewhere and later be recovered... Others could probably think of better implementations than I do.

Is a cleaner implementation necessary? Would it benefit the end user, or would it not be worth it?

1 Answer 1

1

The graphical UI on Linux.. lets say 'Desktop Linux' (that thing doesn't exist), is clearly unsecure. People who are aware of this, doesn't use the OS. Those who develop it, are happy enough if they can manage to fix the bugs of the drivers and stuff. (Like patching up Intel's bad driver.)

Anyway, I don't want to start a flamewar or anything, don't get me wrong.
Here is an article that you might want to read:
http://blogs.iss.net/archive/Shmoocon2011.html

About this unsecurity... I don't know how much you follow the Linux news and stuff, but there was a really nasty bug in KDE's screen lock. If you pressed the ENTER button for a few seconds, the lock manager crashed and you got to the desktop. :)))))

4
  • I understand some of the concepts that you talk about, but (please correct me if I'm wrong) different desktop environments handle screen locking in a different way. However, they all rely on the concept of using an application within the session that, if crashed, would leave everything unlocked. Is an implementation of the save session --> logout as screen lock doable? Feb 13, 2011 at 22:02
  • There is no such save session implemented at the moment. The only save would be hibernation. Which is for a different purpose. And yes, every X11 app relies on X11's lock implementation, they are just frontends. And its really easy to bypass X11's lock.
    – Apache
    Feb 14, 2011 at 13:22
  • There is a new server coming, called Wayland. It'll fix up this mess in Linux, but they have to fix all the stuff to be compatible with it. Hope it goes well and we'll see a working Wayland soon. Ubuntu and Fedora will ship it ASAP. osnews.com/story/24029/Fedora_To_Eventually_Move_to_Wayland_Too
    – Apache
    Feb 14, 2011 at 13:23
  • how is wayland different in this aspect? Feb 15, 2011 at 2:26

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .