How can I change the KDE lockscreen?

Question

I want gdm, lightdm, something--anything--other than the default one in KDE. I'm not talking about the login manager or anything, that I have set to gdm. I'm talking about the lock screen with the ugly background that gets messed up visually with any theme and doesn't look cool to begin with unless you like the stock kde look. Any ideas?

Solution

I think changing only lock screen, not the login manager (i.e diplay manager) would be littl hard. But as you told in the question, you can change the lock screen background.

Simplest way to do that would be overwrite the /usr/share/wallpaper/Elarun/content/images/1366×768.png image with your custom one with same name.

But there is another and safer way to do that.

Not that here ~/.kde4 may be diffrent according to you kde version

mkdir -p ~/.kde4/share/wallpapers/MyWallpaper/contents/images
cp yourImage.png ~/.kde4/share/wallpapers/MyWallpaper/contents/images/1366x768.png

Now create a file ~/.kde4/share/wallpapers/MyWallpaper/metadata.desktop with following contents

[Desktop Entry] 
Name=MyWallpaper 
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=MyWallpaper

Now modify your plasma theme metadata fiel to use this file.

~/.kde4/share/apps/desktoptheme/< your_Theme_Name >/metadata.desktop (if this file is not present, create one) and fillowing contents.

[Wallpaper] 
defaultWallpaperTheme=MyWallpaper 
defaultFileSuffix=.png 
defaultWidth=1366 
defaultHeight=768

Change defaultWidth and defaultHeight according to your resolution.

Source : CHANGE THE KDE LOCK SCREEN BACKGROUND

Comments

[Aiphee]

I personally like kde appearance, if you want to change any aspect of it, it has wide settings you can even browse and download skins etc directly from de.

[Mark E. Haase]

Did you get your answer from here? roger.steneteg.org/615/change-the-kde-lock-screen-background A citation would be nice...

[g_p]

Yes. I have added the source link. :-)