LightDM gets first release in four years with Qt6 support and new maintainers

LightDM, Ubuntu's former display manager, has received its first release in four years — v1.33.0, the debut under a new maintenance team. The update is described as a "catch-up" release: it adds Qt6 support (Qt5 keeps working) and clears a backlog of fixes accumulated since 2022. According to the authors, there are no breaking changes.

LightDM is a backend that handles user session login, with a graphical "greeter" running on top for interaction. Ubuntu used unity-greeter, but other distributions and desktop environments build their own. Linux Mint, for example, switched to LightDM in 2017 along with slick-greeter.

Canonical created LightDM as a replacement for GDM — it debuted in Ubuntu 11.10 — aiming for a lightweight, desktop-agnostic solution that was easy to adapt. However, in 2017 Ubuntu returned to GNOME Shell and GDM, dropping LightDM. Still, various Ubuntu flavors and other projects continued using it.

LightDM's code remained under Canonical's oversight, but according to original maintainer Robert Ancell, it was "essentially unmaintained." The last release came in 2022, and active development, including merge request reviews, ceased by 2024.

The project's future was questioned in 2026 by Fedora's Neal Gompa, as several spins of that distribution rely on LightDM for their login screens. Eventually, enthusiasts stepped up, and with Ancell's blessing, a handover took place. The project is now maintained by Joshua Peisach and Neal Gompa, and contributors no longer need to sign Canonical's contentious Contributor License Agreement. The repository remains within the Ubuntu GitHub family.

Canonical has faced criticism over the years for going its own way with Unity, Mir, Snap, and similar efforts. Yet LightDM's lasting appeal roughly 15 years after its debut suggests that, contrary to some narratives, the company's instincts weren't always wrong.