11-23-2021, 10:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-27-2021, 12:51 PM by DarkXero.
Edit Reason: Post migrated from previous site
)
LightDM Tips & Tricks
Hey there Linux users,
In this post I will be showing you a few LightDM tips, since that DM is based on GTK+ and isn’t native to KDE integrated so you won’t have a GUI tool to configure it.
Below is a video with some LightDM tips and tricks by my good friend Chris Titus. I made an Alias to easily edit the Config file, just type ‘nldm’ once logged in and edit it.
Start out with opening up your
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
and this is where most of the modifications will take place.To do that I have included an Alias you can run in Terminal. Just type “nldm” (no quotes) and file will run.
Changing the Default Desktop Environment
To specify a specific desktop environment you need to change the user-session line to be your desktop environment. For example I use the awesome window manager for mine and I put
user-session=awesome
Quote:Note: If you don’t know the name, the desktop environment list can be found with listing .desktop file from /usr/share/xsessions/*.desktop
For complete listing of user sessions type:
ls /usr/share/xsessions/*.desktop
AutoLogin with LightDM
Change the following part of the file to autologin. Note: This does pose a security risk and should never be done in a business
found Under
[Seat:*]
I generally uncomment the following lines above and just change this line
autologin-user=username
and then it will autologin that user on the next reboot.Quote:Note: You can use the autologin-guest
instead of user to have it autologin as a guest account.
VNC Connection
At the bottom of the lightdm.conf file you will see VNC connection information. This information uses the
Example:
Now with that framework lets look at the conf file:
At the bottom of the lightdm.conf file you will see VNC connection information. This information uses the
tigervnc
package and also is done using secure channel. This means you must establish a SSH connection with a portforward before you can connect to VNC.Example:
ssh 192.168.69.10 -L 9901:localhost:5901
This establishes ssh and port forwards your local port 9901 to 5901 of the remote machine. Then you could launch VNC viewer with vncviewer localhost:9901
. Even though this says localhost it is forwarding the request through SSH to the remote machine.Now with that framework lets look at the conf file:
The main things to change here are
enabled=true width - height - depth
and then you are off. My typical defaults would look like the following:Conclusion
LightDM is very flexible, you just need to tinker around with it. Have fun and do let me know how it goes.