X Display Manager
The program known as the X display manager shows the graphical login prompt in the X Window System. More generally, a display manager runs one or more X servers on the local computer and accepts incoming connections from X servers running on remote computers. The local servers are started by the display manager, which then connects to them to present the user the login screen. The remote servers are started independently from the display manager and connect to it. In this situation, the display manager works like a graphical telnet server: an X server can connect to the display manager, which starts a session; the programs of this session run on the same computer of the display manager but have input and output on the computer where the X server runs (which may be the computer in front of the user or a remote one).
The X Window System ships with XDM as the basic supplied display manager. Other display managers include GDM (GNOME), KDM (KDE), WDM (using the WINGs widget set used in Window Maker) and entrance (using the architecture used in Enlightenment v.17).
Read more about this topic: X Window System Protocols And Architecture
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