I have never seen a SAK-before-login notice on any linux machine. Only one institutional setting, I suppose.

It doesn't look like the implementation is any good though. First, you have to set it up manually. I've literally never seen anyone do that. Second, it works by killing X. Not exactly elegant. But most importantly you don't have to use the SAK to log in! That's kind of the whole point of it.

It should be "Press ctrl-alt-delete to log in", not "By the way you can press ctrl-alt-delete if you want" because then nobody will bother!

> Second, it works by killing X. Not exactly elegant.

It works by killing everything on that particular terminal, no matter if it's text based or graphical. That's the whole point: whatever spawns after that is created by the init system.

> But most importantly you don't have to use the SAK to log in! That's kind of the whole point of it.

> It should be "Press ctrl-alt-delete to log in", not "By the way you can press ctrl-alt-delete if you want" because then nobody will bother!

I can guarantee you, if I were to copy the design of the login screen that shows up after you press ctrl-alt+del, 99.999% of people who don't work in IT won't bat an eye and enter their credentials straight away. It comes down to educating your users. If you don't explain your users why they have to press it before logging in, they will write it off as just random computer stuff they don't understand and only do so because they get prompted to do so. If next time around they don't, they don't care.

So it comes down to educating your users, and I could very well train them to press alt-print-k before logging in, whereas I agree that a friendly reminder on the login screen is a plus.