GNOME Display Manager
GNOME Display Manager 47 (its default appearance uses adark theme)
Developers	The GNOME Project (William Jon McCann, Brian Cameron, Ray Strode)
Stable release	48.0[1]  / 17 March 2025; 11 months ago (17 March 2025)
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix andUnix-like (Linux,BSD,Solaris)
Type	Login manager forWayland,X display manager
License	GPL-2.0-or-later
Website	gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm
Repository	gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm.git

GNOME Display Manager (GDM) is a graphicallogin manager ("display manager") for thewindowing systemsX11 andWayland.

The X Window System by default uses theXDM display manager. However, resolving XDM configuration issues typically involves editing aconfiguration file. GDM allows users to customize or troubleshoot settings without having to resort to acommand line. Users can pick theirsession type on a per-login basis. GDM 2.38.0 is the last version that features customization withthemes; subsequent releases do not support themes.

GDM is a display manager that implements all significant features required for managing attached and remote displays. GDM was written from scratch and does not contain any XDM or X Consortium code.^[2]

GDM comprises the following components:

• Greeter – the graphical login window (provided byGNOME Shell)
• Pluggable authentication module (PAM)

Until version 2.22,^[3] GDM had a fewEaster eggs, in the form of strings to be entered in the username box. These can be found in the source file "gui/guilogin.c", in a function named "evil".^[4]

• Dancing login – type "Start Dancing" to start, and "Stop Dancing" to stop.
  • (This requires the standard greeter ("GTK+ Greeter"), rather than the graphical one ("Themed Greeter")).
• "Gimme Random Cursor" – can be used repeatedly.
  • This changes the mouse cursor to a randomly selected 1 of 77 different "cursor fonts" as defined in the X11 specification.
• "Require Quarter" (or "Require Quater", for backward compatibility with a typo in the original),^[5] then log in normally – a dialog box that reads "Please insert 25 cents to log in." appears after entering the password. Clicking "OK" allows the login process to proceed as normal.

Some of the copyright notices of GDM refer to the "Queen of England", whom release announcements from version 2.2.1 also named as a maintainer.^[6] Subsequently, developers realised that the title "Queen of England" has not existed since theActs of Union of 1707.^[7]

1. getty – a non-graphical login program
2. LightDM
3. SDDM (KDE Plasma 5 andKDE Plasma 6)
4. KDE Display Manager (KDE Plasma 4)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toGNOME Display Manager.

• Official website

• GNOME
• X display managers

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from September 2022
• Commons category link from Wikidata