# The Light Display Manager (LightDM)


## Purpose

LightDM is a cross-desktop display manager that aims is to be the standard display manager for the X.org X server.  The motivation for this project is there have been many new display managers written since XDM (often based on the XDM source).  The main difference between these projects is in the GUIs (e.g. different toolkits) and performance - this could be better accomplished with a common display manager that allows these differences. 

Key features are: 

* A well-defined greeter API allowing multiple GUIs 
* Support for all display manager use cases, with plugins where appropriate 
* Low code complexity 
* Fast performance 

## Download

Development is hosted on [[Launchpad|https://launchpad.net/lightdm]]. [[Tarball releases|http://people.ubuntu.com/~robert-ancell/lightdm/releases/]] are available. 


## Design

See [[Software/LightDM/Design|Software/LightDM/Design]] 


## Customisation

To produce a new greeter, see the [[API reference|http://people.ubuntu.com/~robert-ancell/lightdm/reference/]].  To test new greeters run `lightdm --test-mode`. 


## Contact

Discussion should be done on the [[LightDM mailing list|http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/lightdm]]. [[File bugs|https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm]] for problems/feature requests.