So, I installed lightdm, set it up and it works fine. But it only works with the login screen after I boot up.
If I lock the screen, I’m presented with the standard lock screen which sddm uses and is standard on new installs (even though I have uninstalled sddm and rebooted after).
I tried searching on the web, but it doesn’t seem like it’s an issue anyone else has had.
I’m running Manjaro KDE on a virtual machine with 4Gb and 4 cores. The virtual machine is not the problem, though.
Could this be related to some config file in lightdm? I tried digging through the settings and config files but there’s nothing related to the lockscreen.
Am I missing something?
TL;DR: lockscreen and login screen are different after installing lightdm.
No, that is not correct. The Plasma lock screen is not sddm and also has nothing to do with sddm. It’s a component that’s specific to KDE Plasma and the KDE Frameworks.
You can install another lock screen theme, if you like. There are plenty to choose from over at store.kde.org, but make sure that you pick one that is…
still maintained by its developer; and…
compatible with the current versions of KDE Plasma, the KDE Frameworks and Qt5.
Edit: Upon second inspection, you cannot change the lock screen’s theme, but you can change what it does, e.g. show a wallpaper, a slideshow, et al. And for this, additional plugins are available as well ─ I think you’ll even find some in the AUR ─ of which some should already be installed on your system.
Also, if you choose a different Plasma theme ─ i.e. the theme for the panels and the widgets ─ then this will affect the look & feel of the lock screen as well.
If you navigate to…
System Settings → Workspace → Workspace Behavior → Screen Locking
… you will see a button for configuring the appearance of the lock screen. If you click that, you’ll see a setting labeled “Wallpaper Type”. It has several options you can choose from.
Is there any (easy) way to use this tool provided by lightdm?
dm-tool lock
dm-tool switch-to-greeter
It basically locks the screen using lightdm instead of using the KDE lockscreen you mention.
Or maybe I should just go back to using pop os. This is giving me a headache, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. I thought this would be a setting or something.
I don’t know ─ I’m using sddm as my display manager ─ but lightdm is GTK-based while KDE Plasma is Qt-based, and the twain don’t work well together.
I guess your best bet is to try it and see what gives, although I must say that I don’t understand what your objections are against the default lock screen, or for that matter, against sddm.
If either of these two commands works ─ you can test this by way of a terminal window ─ then you could create a desktop shortcut with the working command in its execute field, and then add this shortcut to your desktop and/or to a panel.
I don’t like the look of it. I prefer how the lock screen and greeter screen look on gnome. But I do like how KDE looks like overall and the ease of customization.
Yes, the commands work, I’ve tried them before.
That would only solve half of the problems, though. What about when the computer is set to sleep? I’d need to replace the way kde handles the lockscreen altogether, otherwise it’s not really fixing the problem. I’m not a linux noob btw, but I’ve never dug this deep into the system, as there was never a need.
I’m not really sure how to proceed.
