Appears to be a replacement for gdm that is console based (picking and launching your graphical desktop environment). A neat idea, I don't think this has been done before.
In the Linux desktop world, "display manager" has various responsibilities but most people not steeped in system components might call it a "login screen". So this is a terminal-based replacement for GDM, SDDM, etc.
Most of that (e.g., keyring) is PAM, not the manager itself.
The xinitrc thing is for all intents and purposes just a command run before your session binary, and sometimes a few extra env vars. Arguably a bad design (just let that be up to the session binary), it oh well. History is what it is.
This has the advantage of executing all your shell mcguffins too, so PYTHON4_LC_COLOR=Europe/Orange is set for the entire desktop session, not just the shells you launch from your desktop environment.
(By the way, exec is a fundamental Unix syscall of interest in that it replaces the current process’s code with new code. Your logout call will never run. The exec is the last thing zsh does before being replaced by sway.)
Due to the WTFPL having no restrictions it seems like it would be functionally identical to MIT-0 or BSD-0, as it wouldn't require attribution or a copy of the copyright/permission notice. It's about as close as one can get to public domain without being public domain.
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[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadIs it like a tmux that automatically creates/arranges new panes for new processes?
They are just login managers now.
The xinitrc thing is for all intents and purposes just a command run before your session binary, and sometimes a few extra env vars. Arguably a bad design (just let that be up to the session binary), it oh well. History is what it is.
https://kl.wtf/posts/2022/03/12/login-managers-an-introducti...
Also I kept having issues with it, not using pam correctly on arch.
Why not just login and run "sway" or "startx"
But I've never got DMs working without any problems, so I just have
in my .zprofile file, which just works (tm).(By the way, exec is a fundamental Unix syscall of interest in that it replaces the current process’s code with new code. Your logout call will never run. The exec is the last thing zsh does before being replaced by sway.)