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Bug 679745 - Automatic Login is confusing
Automatic Login is confusing
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-control-center
Classification: Core
Component: User Accounts
3.24.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Control-Center Maintainers
Control-Center Maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-07-11 11:28 UTC by Allan Day
Modified: 2021-06-09 16:28 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
user-accounts: use Password Login instead of Automatic Login (8.36 KB, patch)
2016-06-13 12:34 UTC, Felipe Borges
reviewed Details | Review

Description Allan Day 2012-07-11 11:28:14 UTC
I honestly had no idea what this option did until I tested it. It's particularly unclear if there is only one user account.

The feature basically asks the system to disregard another user account setting - that is, to require a password. That's never going to be easy to understand.

I don't think this is a good feature. It's confusing and the value is minimal at best. Let's simply offer to secure the account with a password (or some other mechanism) or not, and not complicate it any further.
Comment 1 Matthias Clasen 2012-07-12 01:30:19 UTC
There's a related feature request here: bug 633015
Comment 2 Matthias Clasen 2012-07-12 01:31:41 UTC
So, would you argue for always going through the login screen ?
Or never ?
Or only stop on the login screen if there's more than one user ?
Comment 3 Matthias Clasen 2012-07-13 12:28:39 UTC
My question is answered in https://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/UserAccounts#Update_Proposal
Comment 4 Allan Day 2013-04-19 21:15:02 UTC
This bug still stands, and is described in the design page linked by Matthias above.
Comment 5 Allan Day 2013-06-24 11:37:33 UTC
To clarify: the "Automatic Login" option should be replaced with a "Password Login" switch. All user accounts should have a password; the switch will determine whether the password is required to access the account.

More details can be found on the design page linked to above.
Comment 6 Felipe Borges 2016-06-13 12:34:44 UTC
Created attachment 329690 [details] [review]
user-accounts: use Password Login instead of Automatic Login

password_login == !automatic_login
https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/UserAccounts

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767065
Comment 7 Felipe Borges 2016-06-13 12:35:35 UTC
As I mentioned in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767065#c36

Instead of this patch, I could:
1. keep the autologin* prefixes and just reverse the logic operators;
2. patch accountsservice before;

Let me know if you find 1 or 2 to be better than the patch.
Comment 8 Bastien Nocera 2016-06-13 13:24:43 UTC
Review of attachment 329690 [details] [review]:

Probably better to handle this in bug 767065.
Comment 9 Bastien Nocera 2016-06-13 13:38:14 UTC
Review of attachment 329690 [details] [review]:

I see that this patch was removed from bug 767065. Please remove the reference to it in the commit message.

Code looks fine to me, though the commit message is seriously glib.
Comment 10 Allan Day 2018-01-09 15:50:12 UTC
Coming back to this, I wonder if a "screen lock" setting would be better than the "password login" setting that I described above.

In this approach, every user would always have a password which would be set from the user accounts settings. The "screen lock" switch would live in the privacy settings. When switched off, the user wouldn't be asked for a password. Additionally, waking up the device would go straight to the session, without the screen shield being displayed.

This would have the advantage of separating the user account properties from the privacy settings. The "screen lock" setting would more effectively address the case where the user wants quick, frictionless access to their session, and isn't concerned about privacy.
Comment 11 André Klapper 2021-06-09 16:28:51 UTC
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org.
As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org
which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately
quite limited so not every ticket can get handled).

If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent
and supported software version, then please follow
  https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines
and create a new bug report at
  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/

Thank you for your understanding and your help.