Question regarding the new login theme and using other gdm themes

[Andrew SB]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 28 September 2009 8:58:21 am Dennis Beekman wrote:
>> I have to say that 9.10 alpha 5 looks great for my home computer and i
>> will surtainly install the Beta and RC releases aswell... to follow the
>> changes made to them.
>>
>> However something bothers me and noboddy else can answer this issue on
>> any forums.
>> The school where i do the IT Managment requires that the login screen
>> has they're logo and a wallpaper chosen by them....
>>
>> Before this was not difficult, i had adapted a gdm theme wich installed.
>> but in the Alpha 5 of ubuntu i cannot change gdm themes anymore or so it
>> seems.
>> when i either select it from the menu or call "gdmsetup" from a console
>> i can only select whether is wish to automagically login on not :-(
>
> Modifying gdm2 themes isn't quite the same as the old way.  I've never done
> it, but IIRC, you have to "compile" the theme.  Unfortunately, my Google-fu is
> failing me. I can't find a howto for creating gdm2 themes.

I find it unfortunate that the ability to easily customize your GDM
theme wasn't ported to the new GDM, but one nice thing in theory is
that GDM now uses standard GTK+ themes instead of it's own specialized
themes. In order to change  the theme, you change the GTK+ theme (or
in your case, background) for the gdm user. You should be able to do
that by launching gnome-appearance-properties as the gdm user with:

gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties


- Andrew