Display managers

A display manager allows you to use a login screen and select which window manager you want to use. In this article I will show you some of them.

You may need to manually enable DM service in some Linux distributions.

Table of Contents

• LightDM
• GNOME Display Manager
• LXDM
• SDDM

LightDM

You need to install a “greeter” because lightdm package only has the software core.

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter

GNOME Display Manager

It’s the default DM for GNOME. You can use it with other desktops but it’s a big package (includes a lot of software) and it may not be the best option.

In some Linux distros the package name is gdm, in others gdm3.

LXDM

The default DM for LXDE (valid for other desktops). Installing process is fast.

SDDM

Default DM for KDE (valid for other desktops).