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I downloaded a couple greeters for LightDM, but I have not figured out how to enable them. Is there a way to switch greeter, either by graphical or command-line method?. I do not intend to change display manager, nor the background, but to change the layout and appearance of the login screen through a different "theme" (greeter is the name for LightDm themes). Thanks for your time.

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The greeter is not really a theme. It is a program that interacts with lightdm through a series of api-calls. Some of these greeters then in turn have support for themes. – Zoke Nov 5 '11 at 19:08
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4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Just edit the 'greeter-session' option in '/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf' to the desired greeter.

If you for example want to use the 'lightdm-gtk-greeter'.

Open up '/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf' with any editor as root. For examplesudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf then change the line

greeter-session=unity-greeter

to

greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

Then all you have to do is to restart lightdm.

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Sounds like it this is what I was after, but inserting the selected greeter (lightdm-webkit-greeter) prevented LightDm from starting and had to re-enable unity-greeter through recovery mode. – Tigull Nov 5 '11 at 17:04
Then you appear to have some problem with the webkit-greeter as this is the answer to the question posted. – Zoke Nov 5 '11 at 19:05
Very good then, I' ll try with different greaters. Thanks again. – Tigull Nov 5 '11 at 19:38
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up vote 1 down vote

try to use this little software to change easily lightdm theme (ppa made by Claudio Novais):

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:claudiocn/slm && sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install simple-lightdm-manager

video explain how to use it - check it, please.

Hope you enjoy it.

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This does not change the greeter. It only changes the settings for the unity-greeter. As I understand the question it is not about changing backgrounds. It is about changing from the unity-greeter to another greeter. It does however seem to be a pretty handy tool for editing '/etc/lightdm/unity-greeter.conf'. – Zoke Nov 5 '11 at 16:14
my mistake... :D – Jorge Pinho Nov 5 '11 at 17:32
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up vote 0 down vote

You can change the LightDM greeter by doing the following in the Terminal:

  1. type gksu gedit /etc/lightdm/unity-greeter.conf
  2. scroll down to "background" and change the path/filename
    • I would suggest you copy the file on the same directory so everytime you want to switch, it's easier because they are all on the same folder.
  3. save the file, then
  4. log out

For more information about LightDM, go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LightDM

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Thanks for your suggestion, but this only changes the background image for the Unity Greeter. I asked how to change the greeter itself. – Tigull Nov 5 '11 at 14:49
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up vote 0 down vote

Are you trying to change from LightDM to some other DM, say gdm?

Then try dpkg-reconfigure gdm.

But I found LightDM is much faster than gdm. So don't know why would one like to change.

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