A while back I blogged about the new GDM theme in Ubuntu 9.04 and I was surprised at the number of people that disliked it. Granted I don’t think its the best theme I’ve ever seen either, but is it *that* bad? In response (delayed, I know) to that feedback I thought a post on how to update that login theme to something more artistic would be in order.
Update Default GDM Theme
Updating the GDM theme is a fairly simple process. There is a utility called “gdmsetup” which allows you to customize a number of aspects of the login screen. You can usually find this application in your menu by navigating to:
System > Admin > Login Window
After entering your password you should be able to customize the login screen on the “Local” tab. The Style entry allows you to select Plain or Themed, or a variation with a Face Browser. What you want is Themed, and you can select a different graphic from the list below. You should find a few other default GNOME themes that you can select.
If you’d like to find more themes, go check out GNOME Look. You can easily install any of those GDM themes by selecting “Add” from the Login Window management tool.
For those of you that customize your theme, what are some of your favorite GDM graphics to use?
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I have heard complaints here and there regarding Ubuntu requiring the user to login at boot time. I, personally, prefer this as I feel it ads a level of security to my machine, but I can see situations where it’d simply be annoying. If you are the only user on your machine and you’d like to enable automatic user login at boot time this post will outline how.
Enabling Timed or Automatic Login
I’ll start with the Automatic Login option and then outline Timed Login below. Both are very similar, and they are configured in the same place. To enable Automatic Login you can navigate to:
System > Administration > Login Window
You will have to provide your password for authentication and then you’ll be presented with the Login Window Preferences tool. To enable Automatic Login you’ll want to navigate to the Security tab.
As you see from the screenshot you have the option to Enable Automatic Login by checking the box. You will also need to select a user to be the default account from the drop down list.
For the Timed Login you’ll want to check the second box, select the user and also select the timeout value. If, for example, you want your machine to auto-login after 30 seconds you’d set the “Pause before login:” value to “30″.
<disclaimer>Again, I would warn you that anyone able to get access to your machine will now be able to access all of your files and settings by simply booting the machine as normal. I prefer to enter my username and password as an additional level of security.</disclaimer>
