Ubuntu “Human” Gnome-Screensaver Lock Dialog Theme

By | 2007/09/22

One of my friends let me in on a project he put together today that I think a lot of you would be interested in. Actually I think it would be a great addition to squeeze into the next Ubuntu release (can some of the higher-ups with a say on the freezes perhaps take a look?) It is a “human” themed gnome screensaver lock dialog. Very simple really, but I think it adds a bit more graphical unification to the Ubuntu desktop–makes the look feel a bit more global if you know what I mean.

Below are manual installation instructions (pending being merged into the official package *nudge-nudge*) and a few small screenshots to give you an idea of what it looks like.

screenshot #1

screenshot #2

screenshot #3

screenshot #4

To install:

Download “Human” themed screen-lock

  1. Extract the contents of gnome-screensaver-human.tar.bz2 into /usr/share/gnome-screensaver.
  2. Run ‘gconftool-2 -s – -type=string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme human’

Reverting back to the default:

  1. Run ‘gconftool-2 -s – -type=string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme default’

If you have any problems with this please leave a comment. Or, more importantly, if you enjoy this theme and would like to see it included in the official packaging please leave a comment as sort of a “petition on inclusion”. Enjoy everyone.

38 thoughts on “Ubuntu “Human” Gnome-Screensaver Lock Dialog Theme

  1. Joe A

    Very nice. Any ideas on how to do this with other themes?

  2. jorge

    Heh, cool. Needs rounded corners though. 😉

  3. Will Smith

    In the command it is two hyphens not a dash before “type”. It didn’t like when I just copied and pasted.

  4. JMan

    This is nice, Pretty is a Feature. Good integration with the rest of the Distro.

    I also wish that the bug where you have the password set in one lang and are using another lang by default was fixed. if your password is in chinese but are using english when ur screen lock comes up, you can’t login (b/c u can’t change the language).

  5. Shizeon

    I like it much better than the default one. The leave message button is not working for me though. Clicking it does nothing. Is this supposed to work?

  6. thebluesgnr

    Nice work. I prefer the original though, that looks like every other dialog on my system. 🙂

  7. Count Jocular

    Shiny. I definitely vote to throw this into the main mix. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, but it certainly brings a more unified feel to the desktop.

  8. Daniel Nylander

    Excellent!

    You should of course include the text “This screen is locked..” or “.. is in use by xxxx”.

    .. and the text should be localized 🙂

  9. Jon

    I love it but I am too new to figure out how to untar them to that directory. would anyone be willing to help me out please.

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  11. mr troll

    I’d vote for overruling the freezes as this is a good enhancement and not very invasive – it could never break anything major. Please get this into Gutsy.

  12. torgeir

    I really like this because it’s gives a feeling of completeness to the userexperience.

    My 2 cents are to add a small amount of space between the the password field and the text (wrong password etc.) below it.

  13. Lorenz

    Yeah, that looks cool 🙂
    Like it

    And yes – it’s

    gconftool-2 -s –type=string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme human

  14. Nathan Samson

    Very very nice.

    For me the leave message does not appear? How can I enable it?

  15. Chris

    The Leave Message feature was introduced in Gnome 2.20.0. You will have this feature if you’re suing a updated version of Ubuntu Gutsy; it isn’t available in Feisty AFAIK.

  16. Fredrik

    Really nice but I get strange grey lines under all buttons. Could be a Compiz-fusion problem.

  17. seele

    What is the “Unlock” button for? If you are at the password dialog, aren’t you already trying to unlock the screen?

  18. denvist

    Sorry for my english, i’m russian =)

    Why Lock Dialog not fullscreen?

    Lock dialog appear on center of monitor, another space it’s just fill some color.

    How can i resize it to fullscreen?

  19. Vadim P.

    Signing to have it by default, it’s very nice.

  20. James Justin Harrell

    There’s been some work lately on making the various login dialogs more consistent. You should read about it if you’re actually interested in getting this into Ubuntu.

    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnifiedLoginUnlock

    I really don’t understand these people saying “zOMg pretty! stick it in plox!” without doing any research.

  21. taggat

    Crashes my Feisty Dell 1501 when I try to open the screensaver control panel

  22. Samuel N. Woods

    While I do think theres some promise to such an application it needs to be customizable like anything else, because honestly the default ubuntu desktop isn’t very pretty and most people it seems end up changing it.

    If you wanted to bring more coherency to the distribution it wouldn’t just have to be human themed it would have to be customizable and be able to be turned off and set back to the default.

  23. polarizer

    Whatz that? When clicking the screenshot links following messing comes up

    Oops . . .

    Unfortunately you have visited during a time of normal server maintenance. This site should be available again in 30 minutes. We are sorry for any inconvenience. Please check back soon

    Sounds like a thing from the 90ties to me.

    my 2 cents – polarizer

  24. Samuel N. Woods

    Believe it or not I actually miss InsidetheWeb.

  25. matt

    @taggat, really? You using the one with no rounded corners, or the edited one I did? For me neither crash it…

  26. tone

    Looks great, but the “leave message” button isn’t working for me. Any ideas?

  27. Daniel

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Gnome-Screensaver Lock Dialog Theme : Ubuntu Tutorials : Dapper – Edgy – Feisty – Gutsy, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

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  30. Tom

    Why do I still have a gray background to the dialog instead of the nice human brown? Do I have to change some other configuration item?

  31. xMoDx

    can you please update your post? links seems not working anymore

  32. anonymous

    Tried this in lucid, and it doesn’t seem to work any longer? Anyone got an update?

  33. Vladimir

    Works but need to convert theme from Glide to GtkBuilder….
    GtkBuilder theme have .ui extensions and this can be made by Glade3 utility…
    Please note that we need to remove main container GtkWindow. You can do this by clicking right button on the lock-dialog node in Glade and click Remove Parent. After it save in GtkBuilder format.

    Thats all. Good luck =)

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