Arch Linux

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,240

Using GDM as the login manager to run Plasma Wayland

After the update to Plasma 6 which runs very well in general, I was still not entirely happy that sddm does not run under Wayland in a fully satisfactory way (no monitor powersave when sddm greeter is on the screen but no user is logged in), so I explored using GDM instead of SDDM as the login manager.  Using pacman to install GDM, and then using gsettings (as user GDM) to change the keyboard to UK and enabling touchpad tap-to-click was fine and indeed it is possible to also turn off the timeout for GDM so that it does not suspend the machine when no user is logged in.  However after trying many options to change the GDM greeter background with gsettings I failed to find any straightforward way to get the GDM greeter to have my own background wallpaper image. One method that I thought may work was to do as root:

machinectl shell gdm@ /bin/bash
 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file:///opt/shared/wallpapers/banner-custom.png'

After checking that this setting had been changed, the GDM greeter background remained the dark uniform default and my custom image was not set as the GDM wallpaper.

Aside from using a package that is in the AUR to change the GDM background image, that I am aware of, I would like to know if it is possible to change the GDM background without resorting to using the AUR package. Has anyone managed to do that without being logged in to gnome, and only using GDM as a login manager to log in to Plasma 6?

Last edited by mcloaked (2024-03-19 09:55:21)

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Mike C