LightDM GTK+ Greeter 1.7.0 Released

After several weeks of development, the first development release leading to LightDM GTK+ Greeter version 1.8 has been made available. Thanks to some new contributors, there’s quite a bit to see this time around.

Sean Davis

Dec 28, 2013 • 3 min read

Release Notes

New Features

Window positioning (relative or absolute) of the login window and power dialogs is now configurable.
The default user-image displayed for user’s without a profile image is now configurable.

Accessibility Improvements

The onboard on-screen keyboard application is now run in xembed mode.
The accessibility menu items can now be activated with the F1, F2, and F3 hotkeys.
The selected user can now be changed from the username and password entries with the up and down keys.
The power dialogs can now be cancelled with the Escape key.

Lock Screen Improvements

When the LightDM GTK+ Greeter is used as a locked, it now blanks the screen when activated.

Bugs Fixed

Debian #718497: Last PAM error message not showing
Debian #721510: Greeter panel clock fails with long date formats
LP #1031421: Greeter doesn’t select user’s last session when using “Other”
LP #1147914: Can’t change the login window’s position
LP #1191509: Disabling language selector leaves strange artifact on the screen
LP #1194694: move to password input if <enter> pressed after username input
LP #1231134: support enter key to validate login entry
LP #1232804: Improve “login greeter -> desktop” transition in Xubuntu
LP #1251431: user background gets painted over background specified in config file
Fixed typo in language selection code
Fixed keyboard focus when used with the on-screen keyboard

New Features

Window Positioning

10 pixels from the left and 30% down (position=10 30%)

With the added window positioning, the login window and power dialogs can now be placed based on relative or absolute values.

Configuration is simple. Values can be represented as percentages, positive (from the top/left), and negative (from the bottom/right). Some layout examples are below.

# position = main window position: x y

# 20% horizontally, 40% vertically
position = 20% 40%

# 10 pixels from the left, 50% vertically
position = 10 50%

# 100 pixels from the right, 50% vertically
position = -100 50%

Default User Image

The default user image configured as “#distributor-logo”, useful for distributions.

The profile image that is displayed for user’s that have not already chosen an image can now be configured. Previously the image was always set to “avatar-default”. The value can either be the path to an image file, or an icon name. Sample configuration is below.

# default-user-image = Image used as default user icon, path or #icon-name

# Using a file path
default-user-image = /usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png

# Using an icon name, distro logo
default-user-image = #distributor-logo

Screenshots

Default configuration with user’s selected background.

F1, F2, and F3 hotkeys now make the Accessibility menu more accessible.

The default user image configured as “#distributor-logo”, useful for distributions.

Download and Installation

The source code for LightDM GTK+ Greeter can be obtained from the downloads page. Ubuntu users (Quantal through Trusty) can also install it from the Stable PPA using the following commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lightdm-gtk-greeter-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

If you find any bugs, please report them on the bugs page.