Changing Your Login Screen

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Changing Your Login Screen

On the art.gnome site, you may have noticed that there is a link for something called Login Manager . The Login Manager is your login screen, also known as a greeter — the screen where you type in your username and user password when you first log in to your system. The Login Manager is another thing that you can customize, but you have to have root privileges in order to do so. In addition, any changes you make will be system-wide, not just for you, so whatever Login Manager theme you install and choose will be the Login Manager theme that everyone else using your computer will see when they use the machine. Of course, if you are the only one using your machine, this point is moot.

Downloading a Login Manager Theme

In order to try customizing the Login Manager, go to the http://art.gnome.org site and click the Login Manager link. Once you’ve done this, browse through the various themes and download one or two that you want; I’m giving you free rein this time around. As with the other files you’ve downloaded thus far, be sure to download these to your Thematics folder.

Installing Your New Login Manager Theme

Once you’ve downloaded a theme or two of your liking, you need to open the Login Screen Setup window. To do this, go to the Main menu and then select System Settings > Login Screen . A dialog box asking for your root password will then open. Type in your root password, click OK , and the Login Screen Setup window will then soon appear (see Figure 5-14).

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Figure 5-14: Customizing the Login Manager

Click the Graphical greeter tab at the top of the window. You will then see a list of the greeters that are included by default in your system, and you can click each one to see a thumbnail preview.

You can add the greeters you just downloaded to this list, but, unfortunately , you cannot install them by just dragging them here. Instead, you have to click the Install new theme button, but that is hardly a gargantuan task.

Once you click Install new theme , a window will open up from which you can locate your new file. Remember, the file should be located in /home/username/ Thematics . After you’ve selected your file, click OK , and it will immediately appear in the list of greeters.

To select the greeter you wish to use, just click its name in the list in the Login Screen Setup window, and then click the Close button. Of course, to see your greeter in action, you will have to log out first so you can log back in, but you needn’t restart or shut down the machine.

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Choosing a Screensaver

Used to be that screensavers were a must-have (and must-use) item for computer users so as to prevent damage (burn-in) to your monitor. Video display technology, however, has now advanced to the point that screensavers are no longer necessary. Nevertheless, screensavers are cool to look at, and one very nice thing about Fedora is that it comes with an unusually extensive collection of screensaver modules — nearly 200 of them! There are so many that you are sure to find at least a few you like. The screensaver settings are preconfigured to switch between modules randomly , changing the current module every few minutes. You can change these settings by going to your Main menu and selecting Preferences > Screensaver .

The Screensaver Preferences window, shown in Figure 5-15, allows you to do a variety of things, such as set the length of time between module changes and the length of idle time before the screensaver starts up. You can also opt to use only one screensaver module or no screensaver at all. In random mode, you can also omit the modules that you don’t like by unchecking the boxes next to the undesired modules’ names .

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Figure 5-15: Setting screensaver preferences