Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 30, 2026

Simple Desktop Display Manager

Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) is a display manager for the X11 and Wayland windowing systems. SDDM was written from scratch in C++11 and supports theming via QML.

Last revised
May 30, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
303 w
Citations
13
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Simple Desktop Display Manager
Original authorAbdurrahman Avci
DevelopersAbdurrahman Avci, KDE, LXQt, Liri1
Initial release19 March 2013 (2013-03-19)2
Stable release
0.21.03 Edit this on Wikidata / 26 February 2024 (26 February 2024)
Written inC++, QML
PlatformUnix-like
TypeX display manager
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later4
Websitegithub.com/sddm/sddm Edit this on Wikidata
Repository

Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) is a display manager (a graphical login program) for the X11 and Wayland windowing systems.5 SDDM was written from scratch in C++11 and supports theming via QML.6

SDDM is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or later.4

Adoption

In 2013, Fedora KDE members decided to default to SDDM in Fedora 21.7

KDE chose SDDM to be the successor of the KDE Display Manager for KDE Plasma 5.89 In 2023, KDE forked SDDM to form the basis of the new Plasma Login Manager, which will become KDE's default login manager starting with Plasma 6.6.1011

The LXQt developers recommend SDDM as a display manager.12

See also

See also

  • LightDM, Light display manager, formerly written for Ubuntu, now independent
  • GDM, the default graphical login program for GNOME
References

References

  1. Pier Luigi Fiorini (2014). "plfiorini's blog".
  2. "Release v0.1.0". GitHub. 19 January 2013.
  3. "Release 0.21.0". 26 February 2024. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
  4. "README.md". GitHub.
  5. "0.12.0-Release-Announcement". GitHub.
  6. "SDDM: A Lightweight QML-Based Display Manager". 19 January 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
  7. Rex Dieter (26 November 2013). "Rex's Blog".
  8. "Display Managers In Plasma 5". 3 November 2014. Archived from the original on 2015-08-27.
  9. Larabel, Michael (3 November 2014). "SDDM Is The Recommended Display Manager Of KDE Plasma 5". Phoronix. Retrieved 3 November 2014.
  10. "# A Roadmap for a modern Plasma Login Manager". Planet KDE. 2025-03-26. Retrieved 2026-02-08.
  11. "Fedora 44 Will Be the First Distro to Adopt KDE's Plasma Login Manager". It's FOSS. 2026-01-07. Retrieved 2026-02-08.
  12. Leclanche, Jerome (2013-10-30). "[Lxde-list] CALL FOR TESTERS: LXQt now available for testing". sourceforge.net. SourceForge. Retrieved 2015-08-08. ... For a display manager, SDDM is recommended ...