Sometimes I get bored with my login screen. Then I try to figure out, which is the most easy way to change it. Then I came out with this solution. For your information, all your login themes are stored in /usr/share/gdm/themes directory. For default, there are 6 themes that you can choose. You can download from the internet or create your own new one if you want to have more options.
taufanlubis@toshiba:~$ cd /usr/share/gdm/themes
taufanlubis@toshiba:/usr/share/gdm/themes$ ls -l
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-12-01 07:54 circles
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-12-01 07:54 happygnome
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-12-01 07:54 happygnome-list
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-12-16 06:33 Human
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-10-16 06:21 HumanCircle
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-10-16 06:21 HumanList
taufanlubis@toshiba:/usr/share/gdm/themes$
You don’t have to change any xml scripts, all you have to do is just choose a theme and replace the background with your one picture. To see the available themes, open System > Administration > Login window then open the Local Tab. For this sample I choose Human theme.
The idea is just replace the background.png with your picture. I suggest to make a copy of original background.png in case you want to use it back. You can’t drag your picture from your directory to /usr/share/gdm/themes/Human directory because you don’t have permissions to write to this folder.
Open Application > Accessories > Terminal.
taufanlubis@toshiba:~$ cd /usr/share/gdm/themes/Human
taufanlubis@toshiba:/usr/share/gdm/themes/Human$ ls -l
total 624
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 387387 2007-12-16 06:33 background.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 5910 2007-04-04 16:32 bottom_bar.svg
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 5221 2007-04-04 16:32 boundingbox.svg
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 289 2007-10-12 21:28 GdmGreeterTheme.desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-10-16 06:21 gtk-2.0
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 4314 2007-04-04 16:32 Human.xml
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 412 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-language-active.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 412 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-language.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 414 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-language-prelight.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 292 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-reboot-active.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 316 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-reboot.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 295 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-reboot-prelight.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 819 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-session-active.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 575 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-session.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 819 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-session-prelight.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 387 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-shutdown-active.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 616 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-shutdown.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 576 2007-04-04 16:32 icon-shutdown-prelight.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 18023 2007-04-04 16:32 screenshot.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 134015 2007-04-04 16:32 ubuntu.png
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2703 2007-04-04 16:32 userentry.svg
Step 1. Create a back up for your background image (if you need it).
taufanlubis@toshiba:/usr/share/gdm/themes/Human$ sudo cp background.png background.png.backup
taufanlubis@toshiba:/usr/share/gdm/themes/Human$
Step 2. Go to your Picture directory and copy the picture to theme directory to replace the theme background picture.
taufanlubis@toshiba:~/MyData/Pictures/Wallpaper Mac4Linux$ sudo cp Mac-OS-X-Tiger-2-1680×1050.jpg /usr/share/gdm/themes/Human/background.png
Your old file picture file name: Mac-OS-X-Tiger-2-1680×1050.jpg
Your new file name: background.png
The sharpness of the picture will be depend on the pixel size.
That’s it.
Now, you can log out to see your new login screen.
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