LightDM - Feb 2012 - Changing the appearance of the login box

I'm the founder and lead developer of the lightweight Linux distro Swift
Linux.  I'm currently in the process of switching from the old antiX Linux
base to the new Linux Mint Debian Edition base.

The new Swift Linux will be using LightDM instead of SLiM.  I've found that
replacing LMDE's default GDM display manager with SLiM disables many
functions (like audio).  Restoring these functions means messing around with
groups and permissions.  Like GDM, LightDM enables these functions.  However,
LightDM is substantially lighter than GDM.  Given that Swift Linux needs to fit
on a CD without sacrificing LibreOffice, every MB counts.

What I miss from SLiM is the better-looking login box.  The default login box of
LightDM is ugly.

How do I change the appearance of the login box?  I'd like to make it
translucent, shrink the session box, and eliminate the icon and the computer
name from the display.

-- 
Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>

Hi Jason,

LightDM runs different 'greeters' to provide the user interface.
You're probably referring to the default GTK+ greeter [1].

You have a number of options here:
- You can write your own greeter that has the UI set up as you like.
- You can fork/patch the GTK greeter to have the changes you want.
- You can modify the GTK greeter to have the changes you want.  This
greeter is being used by a few projects but it's not being actively
developed.  (It was intended to be just an example).  New contributors
would be very welcome, you just need to check if the users generally
agree on the same direction.
- You can switch to another greeter.  LXDE worked on the GtkBuilder
based greeter [2] which can be reconfigured using a GtkBuilder file.
There's also a webkit base greeter [3] which is being used by the
Elementary project.  There's also two Qt greeters [4] [5].

[1] https://launchpad.net/lightdm-gtk-greeter
[2]
http://lxde.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lxde/ldm-gtk-builder-greeter;a=summary
[3] https://launchpad.net/lightdm-webkit-greeter
[4] https://launchpad.net/lightdm-qt-greeter
[5] https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/base/lightdm

On 11 February 2012 06:28, Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>
wrote:
> I'm the founder and lead developer of the lightweight Linux distro
Swift Linux. ?I'm currently in the process of switching from the old antiX
Linux base to the new Linux Mint Debian Edition base.
>
> The new Swift Linux will be using LightDM instead of SLiM. ?I've found
that replacing LMDE's default GDM display manager with SLiM disables many
functions (like audio). ?Restoring these functions means messing around with
groups and permissions. ?Like GDM, LightDM enables these functions. ?However,
LightDM is substantially lighter than GDM. ?Given that Swift Linux needs to fit
on a CD without sacrificing LibreOffice, every MB counts.
>
> What I miss from SLiM is the better-looking login box. ?The default login
box of LightDM is ugly.
>
> How do I change the appearance of the login box? ?I'd like to make it
translucent, shrink the session box, and eliminate the icon and the computer
name from the display.
>
> --
> Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>
> _______________________________________________
> LightDM mailing list
> LightDM at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/lightdm