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In my quest to go super old school, which comes from my quest to wait less for bulky-yet-pretty software components that don't render properly on my system anyway, I decided to ditch the login manager. Bye now!

So after a hearty

sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.for-wusses
sudo sed -i 's/\(GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\).*/\1"text"/' /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

It's back like in the nineties! Start the computer, watch all kinds of confusing boot log outputs, and then be greeted with the classic, lovely:

Login:

Aaaaaah. Much better. A quick

echo i3>> .xinitrc # Replace i3 if you are running something less awesome than i3

Tops it off... and now I get a super fast and super quickly started GUI by just running

startx

after the great live-in-the-matrix-style console logon.

This could be automated. But that would not be old school.

(If that is too hard core for you... this will bring back whatever familiar glitchy GUI login bloatness you had: sudo mv /etc/default/grub.for-wusses /etc/default/grub)

Too bad I can't ssh any more without entering my passphrase every darn time. Guess the nineties weren't perfect either. So what... if... I could have 2015 style ssh login convenience without seeing it? Best of both worlds. Be coddled by modernty and still look super old school. Sounds perfect to me.

And low and behold! This will do just that:

sudo cp /etc/pam.d/login /etc/pam.d.login.no-oldschool-convenience
sudo cp /etc/pam.d/passwd /etc/pam.d.passwd.no-oldschool-convenience
echo "auth     optional  pam_gnome_keyring.so"$'\n'"session  optional  pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start" | sudo tee -a /etc/pam.d/login > /dev/null
echo "password  optional  pam_gnome_keyring.so" | sudo tee -a /etc/pam.d/passwd > /dev/null
echo "
if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"; then
  eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session)
  export $(/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --start --components=pkcs11,secrets,ssh,gnupg)
fi" >> .profile

Logout, login, startx, and SSH works. Grand. Just grand.

(Get rid of it with mv /etc/pam.d.login.no-oldschool-convenience /etc/pam.d/login ; mv /etc/pam.d.passwd.no-oldschool-convenience /etc/pam.d/passwd, then edit .profile and remove the if block above

Troubleshooting