Comment 37 for bug 897212

(In reply to Matthias Clasen from comment #25)
> Lets close this. It is intentional that gdm is not touching the home
> directory.

Dear Matthias,

I do not think that closing this bug is the proper way to handle it. I am not sure whether you are away of the original rationale behind the .dmrc file but there is a actually a very important one which is for the user being able to store the settings about the default session and language in a networked environment.

Many users, especially paying RedHat customers, are using gdm in a networked environment with homes shared over NFS and people not having a dedicated desktop computer. This means, they need a machine-independent way to store these settings, storing them in a /var subdirectory is completely useless in this setup.

If you decide to completely ignore this very important use case, it's your decision. However, since many users need gdm to work in that way, I am predicting more shifts away from GNOME or gdm in the future or one of RedHat's strategic customers writing a complaint (just look at GNOME bug #637095 plus the asssociated RH bugs #561904 and #902448) in the future so that you *have* to reopen and fix the bug. Remember, this is a feature enterprise customers need and use and by removing it, you are deliberately making their lifes harder.

Remember, it were actually actions like these from your side which made people fork GNOME and come up with alternatives like MATE.

Please consider reopening this bug, it's a mandatory feature in networked environments!

Adrian