Fedora is one of very few distributions that does not have the auto-login feature in its graphical user management tool. Auto-login allows the system to automatically login a user without requesting authentication, that is, it enables password-less logins. While it is a very convenient feature, it is a security risk. Why?

By default, Ubuntu requires that you login each time you run the operating system. If you are the only person using the computer and aren’t worried about security you can enable automatic login.

Here you can see the default login screen for Ubuntu 8.10. You simply add username and password and you have access to the Desktop. Simple, however, as you will see there are many options that can go with this login process. If you will go to System/Administration and select Login Window you will find that you have a lot of options available for login.

You can login to a remote Linux server without entering password in 3 simple steps using ssky-keygen and ssh-copy-id as explained in this article.

Autologin and passwordless login play a critical role in the physical security posture of your computer. In KDE, they are very easy to configure. But being easy to configure does not mean that you should. Why?

From a security perspective, passwordless login falls in the same category as autologin. It is, therefore, not recommended to enable it for an account with management privileges.

You can use an on online attack as an opportunity to check that your security systems detect when a server is being bombarded with unsuccessful login attempts, and that individual accounts lock after a small number of unsuccessful login attempts.

Designing for surveillance means, more or less by definition, designing a less secure, more vulnerable infrastructure.

Ubuntu makes it easy to enable automatic login if you're using a login manager such as GDM. I was recently setting up a minimal Ubuntu 9.10 system with an LXDE desktop and no GDM. Here's how I enabled automatic login.

If you are looking to create a GUI application that can be easily ported to all major operating systems, wxWidgets is a great choice. It has a graphical tool for designing the forms, has bindings for many languages, and is an established, robust library.