[HowTo] Fixing LightDM greeter tap-to-click for touchpads and mouse pointer theme (for X11)

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Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆

Something that has irritated me a long time is the relative rigidity of the LightDM greeter settings in the GUI. The settings dialog exposes only some of them, an two important ones are not there.

First the touchpad click behavior.

For some unknown reason, the default by manjaro for the live image and on a fresh installation is press-to-click. Me personally, i have never seen anyone using a touchpad like this. Nowadays, with 4-5 inch touchpads inspired by Apple and smartphones it is all about multitouch, swiping and gestures, and i do not think anyone wants to “hammer” on the touchpad anymore. After logging in, this behavior can easily be changed in the Mouse settings. However, what you set there in the GUI control panel, at least on XFCE but i strongly suspect on other DEs too, is not valid for the LightDM greeter. To change the touchpad behavior there, we have to create a drop-in configuration file, since there is no GUI for that (at least on XFCE).

sudo touch /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf

Then open the file with your favorite admin://-, polkit-aware or terminal editor (NEVER start a GUI editor with something like “sudo mousepad”). I recommend micro, you can of course use the built-in nano.

sudo micro /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf

and paste the following, then save with CTRL+S and exit with CTRL+Q:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

After restarting you will now be able to select language, session, user and so on with tapping.

The second mod/fix which i hereby offer you is purely cosmetic. The used mouse pointer on the greeter is the default X11 mouse pointer. Even if you find it ok from the design point of view, on higher resolutions like fullhd and above it will be pretty small. To fix this, the solution is to manually set the mouse pointer theme in the config file, because in the GUI settings dialog there is just no setting for it.

sudo micro /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf

Insert/edit/uncomment/modify the line and save the file.

cursor-theme-name = breeze-cursors

Breeze-cursors is an example, you can choose any cursor theme that is system-wide installed (not just in your home folder).
This means the name of any directory which contain a subdirectory “cursors” under /usr/share/icons/

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