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⇱ KDE Developers Begin Working On A New Login Manager - Phoronix


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KDE Developers Begin Working On A New Login Manager

Written by Michael Larabel in KDE on 26 March 2025 at 06:48 AM EDT. 94 Comments
KDE developer David Edmundson has published a lengthy blog post today outlining the long-standing challenges they have with the SDDM display manager, unimplemented features they want out of a log-in manager, and acknowledging GNOME's GDM as a "gold standard" for display managers. While not yet an official project, they have begun working on a new KDE Login Manager for improving the situation.

Edmundson has been involved in SDDM development and in acknowledging its architectural issues has begun working on new Plasma Login / Plasma Login Manager projects in conjunction with fellow KDE developer Oliver Beard. Among the features ultimately desired out of a Plasma Login Manager include:
- Great out-of-box experience in multi-monitor and high DPI and HDR
- Keyboard layout switching
- Virtual keyboards
- Easy Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese (CJK) input
- Display and keyboard brightness control
- Full power management
- Screen readers for blind people (which then means volume control)
- Pairing trusted bluetooth devices
- Login to known Wi-Fi for remote LDAP
- Remote (VNC/RDP) support from startup

While not yet an official KDE project, the developers have begun working on this new Plasma Login / Plasma Login Manager code. Their new effort began by stripping down the SDDM code as their back-end and now taking it anew with a fresh design.

Their new effort currently lives within the Plasma Login and Plasma Login Manager Git repositories though eventually this code may be merged into a single repository. The code is working and they even have a screenshot to show, but it's not yet ready for distro packaging or a state beyond developers wanting to explore:

👁 New KDE Login Manager screenshot


Those wanting to learn more about this new KDE Plasma log-in manager effort can do so via David Edmundson's blog.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.