[NTLUG:Discuss] Display managers, rhgb and whatever the SuSE equivalent is

[Chris Cox]

Leroy Tennison wrote:
> My understanding of the display managers is that, once they authenticate 
> the user, they spawn an X session.  I was thinking about this and came 

Not exactly.  Since the displaymanger needs X already... it doesn't
have to start one.

> up with a question which also applies to the Red Hat Graphical boot 
> option and it's SuSE equivalent:  If these programs run prior to X 
> (which certainly rhgb and SuSE's graphical display do), what are they 
> using for their graphical display?  How are they figuring out what video 
> card, mouse and monitor exist and how to present on them?  I could 
> understand a DM looking at an X configuration but the other environments 
> have no assurance there there is even an X environment.  Anybody know?

Your displaymanger uses X.

You can check that... go to vc 1 and do a ps -ef and see if there
isn't an X process out there when the login panel is up.

Now... the boot screen... which might be graphical... just
uses the frame buffer AFAIK....  don't confuse the
bootsplash with the displaymanger though.