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Somebody in Gnome did an awesome thing and I want to know who it was: If I open my laptop after being logged in, I can just start typing my password and the lo

Somebody in Gnome did an awesome thing and I want to know who it was: If I open my laptop after being logged in, I can just start typing my password and the login manager does the right thing: "Hey, he's probably typing a password. Let's throw it into the password widget and see what happens..." I'm on an XPS running Ubuntu 20.04. Who implemented that feature? It's a great ergonomic feature and improves the UX of logging in so much.

uncledave 6y ago
The scary thing is we’ve moved on from there on other platforms because those problems were solved forever ago. I sit at my Mac desktop, press any key on my keyboard to wake the machine or tap the touchpad and I’m logged in. Being impressed with the very small changes is a symptom that there are lots of small problems. The most important change for me is I rarely if ever have to enter a password now while at the same time, no random joe can sit at my computer and use it.
- samatman 6y ago
  ...did you skip the part where you're wearing an Apple Watch? Because when the watch isn't on my wrist, I have to either enter my password or hit TouchID, waking up the computer gets me to the password dialog box. Which, to be fair, I can start typing the password directly because the cursor is in the correct place. And this is what you would want, if waking it up meant no authentication then J Random Badguy could in fact walk up and pwn my computer.
  - jancsika 6y ago
    Also for the record, regarding uncledave's general principle: > Being impressed with the very small changes is a symptom that there are lots of small problems. This is directly contradicted by my use case on my XPS under Ubuntu 20.04. I no longer have "Gnu anxiety" on my laptop-- the overarching fear that the values for the next default behavior I run into were chosen at random by troglodytes. Suspend/resume just works. I haven't fiddled with a single touchpad setting and it works the way you'd expect on a Chromebook. Camera works, audio is fine, battery life is decent, and so on. I did get a tinge of anxiety when clicking the desktop scaling setting, but it seems to have worked perfectly so far.
    - uncledave 6y ago
      Power management is one of those things that works and then doesn’t quite regularly. I had “fear of closing the lid” on numerous occasions.
  - uncledave 6y ago
    Yes I did skip that bit. The point is the total integration which the Linux desktop will never reach. Apple (and Microsoft) moved on from the simple cases. TouchID is a second place to that. My T495s has the sensor to do that but it doesn’t work on Linux. Again a typical Linux desktop outcome.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Same. Folks in a Linux bubble don't seem to appreciate that the idea of a password login is, frankly, quaint at this point. You're getting downvoted, of course, but that's just reality: on Windows and MacOS (and iOS and Android, of course), MFA and biometrics are the norm.
hadrien01 6y ago
I love that feature! My work computer runs Windows and I need to press enter or space before typing my password (and because of that sometimes I type a space in my password on GNOME)
thedanbob 6y ago
KDE does the same and I love it too. Windows doesn’t, which always trips me up every time I have to use it.
- jancsika 6y ago
  Hm, I wonder who did it first. Would love to know more about both cases.
kevincox 6y ago
Definitely. At a previous job I set the password of my work Mac to my password less the first character to keep the muscle memory working. No need for an explicit "wake the screen" character.

uncledave 6y ago

The scary thing is we’ve moved on from there on other platforms because those problems were solved forever ago. I sit at my Mac desktop, press any key on my keyboard to wake the machine or tap the touchpad and I’m logged in. Being impressed with the very small changes is a symptom that there are lots of small problems. The most important change for me is I rarely if ever have to enter a password now while at the same time, no random joe can sit at my computer and use it.

samatman 6y ago
...did you skip the part where you're wearing an Apple Watch? Because when the watch isn't on my wrist, I have to either enter my password or hit TouchID, waking up the computer gets me to the password dialog box. Which, to be fair, I can start typing the password directly because the cursor is in the correct place. And this is what you would want, if waking it up meant no authentication then J Random Badguy could in fact walk up and pwn my computer.
- jancsika 6y ago
  Also for the record, regarding uncledave's general principle: > Being impressed with the very small changes is a symptom that there are lots of small problems. This is directly contradicted by my use case on my XPS under Ubuntu 20.04. I no longer have "Gnu anxiety" on my laptop-- the overarching fear that the values for the next default behavior I run into were chosen at random by troglodytes. Suspend/resume just works. I haven't fiddled with a single touchpad setting and it works the way you'd expect on a Chromebook. Camera works, audio is fine, battery life is decent, and so on. I did get a tinge of anxiety when clicking the desktop scaling setting, but it seems to have worked perfectly so far.
  - uncledave 6y ago
    Power management is one of those things that works and then doesn’t quite regularly. I had “fear of closing the lid” on numerous occasions.
- uncledave 6y ago
  Yes I did skip that bit. The point is the total integration which the Linux desktop will never reach. Apple (and Microsoft) moved on from the simple cases. TouchID is a second place to that. My T495s has the sensor to do that but it doesn’t work on Linux. Again a typical Linux desktop outcome.
rodgerd 6y ago
Same. Folks in a Linux bubble don't seem to appreciate that the idea of a password login is, frankly, quaint at this point. You're getting downvoted, of course, but that's just reality: on Windows and MacOS (and iOS and Android, of course), MFA and biometrics are the norm.

hadrien01 6y ago

I love that feature! My work computer runs Windows and I need to press enter or space before typing my password (and because of that sometimes I type a space in my password on GNOME)

thedanbob 6y ago

KDE does the same and I love it too. Windows doesn’t, which always trips me up every time I have to use it.

jancsika 6y ago
Hm, I wonder who did it first. Would love to know more about both cases.

kevincox 6y ago

Definitely. At a previous job I set the password of my work Mac to my password less the first character to keep the muscle memory working. No need for an explicit "wake the screen" character.