This is a really long HOWTO; or that was my intention; before I abandoned it.
Yeah it did work; but I stopped short of describing that and changed my answer recommending you don’t follow what I was doing, but instead just change the wallpaper. If you do what I had to do, it’s not the easiest way anyway…
If you want to skip my abandoned howto response; jump to the “Stopping my howto response at this point” bold section & read from there (or the links I gave just before that on new themes we’ll get to when we can)
Howto
(Note: I didn’t finish writing this part; as I had to install extra package(s) to get it working; which I don’t think is worth it; I also used a meta package and didn’t want to delve down to find which actual package(s) are actually required)
I went to KDE Store & found a theme, https://store.kde.org/p/1607367
This was in firefox
which offered to SAVE the file or open in LXQt File Archiver. I usually save these types of files & open, but in this case I just had it directly open in LXQt File Archiver
I selected all & extracted; in my case this was a fresh QA-install so I didn’t create a directory; using only ~/Downloads/ which created a directory inside it titled “Twilight_Dark” (ie. the name of the theme I’d selected).
Lubuntu’s provided theme is packaged in sddm-theme-lubuntu
which expands to the directory /usr/share/sddm/themes/lubuntu
on install; so I’ll just move the details to that directory, ie.
sudo mv ~/Downloads/Twilight-dark/ /usr/share/sddm/themes/
Changing to themes as discussed in the manual assume you’ve added them from repository packages; which does simplify things, alas I’ve opted not to in this case.
The manual next tells me to edit the file /usr/share/sddm/themes/lubuntu/theme.conf
which I do firstly with sudoedit
(which can be a safer option than sudo nano
), alas I’m not good at nano
so switch instead of vim
… alas here I think the manual needs updating - and why you’ve probably gone wrong sorry.
I instead sudoedit
/etc/sddm.conf`
where I added lines
[Theme]
Current=Twilight-dark
On reboot the theme is changed; alas it’s now what I selected so I’ve actually failed, with a few errors, so I
sudoedit /usr/share/sddm/themes/Twilight-dark/Main.qml
and comment out the lines that created the issue, reboot to try and there are loads more issues… and I’m reminded of this discussion and a Lubuntu task.
Stopping my howto response at this point
Sorry this isn’t as easy for a clean Lubuntu install. On prior attempts I’ve had no issues; however that’s likely because
- of the theme I’ve picked being generic (ie. I was lucky), OR
- I’d used boxes that already had
kubuntu-desktop
installed additionally to my Lubuntu, so everything was already present and I could pick any sddm
theme & have it just work
but no doubt I’ve hit issues you encountered and yeah it’s not easy. The theme I used was a newish one that appeared on my first page of sddm themes.
Changing the background sddm
wallpaper
Some changes are easy; eg. background is just a single file (/usr/share/sddm/themes/lubuntu/wall.png
) and a link to an installed file, thus is easy to replace. I recall also making other changes to (Main.qml) the file for experimentation purposes, but most changes I make on my main box is minimal & usually backed out, so my box is mostly standard and I can hopefully detect changes and possible issues before they hit users (I’m on the development cycle)
This was done on a box to my left (a box I use for QA-test installs; ie. this was tested on a freshly installed Lubuntu jammy), however I bet if I re-tried this on the box to my right (which I do actually use on occasion), it’ll work flawlessly as it has extra package(s) installed.
If it was me; I’d just recommend changing the wallpaper if you’re using Lubuntu, given you need to install KDE/Kubuntu package(s) for it to easily work; and to me that’s not worth if for something that is only visual & seen briefly before you actually start working on your box; having no actual impact on what (to me anyway) matters which is all after you’ve logged in & start working.
I mentioned upstream was working on an easier fix; I’d recommend waiting for that. The other thread I referenced on this post provides additional details mentions editing the Main.qml
file I did countless times in forming this response.
FYI: I reversed all my changes to return the Main.qml
back to default; got my first warning; then added a package to the system & bingo it was perfect (even has nice changes on timeout etc as it sits besides me as I type this), but as already stated… my option for a lean Lubuntu install would be just changing the background which can be done super easily to one you like, unless you’re likely me and don’t mind a bloated system.
If I had a need to document/complete my howto section, I’d want to narrow down the actual package(s) required; which I didn’t do - getting bored & opting for a meta package that I knew would fix the issue. Pick the right themes and the additional packages aren’t required anyway.
Sorry I could re-write this to make it clearer; but I’m sick of it & would rather just delete it; why I’ve been slow to submit it. I used jammy as it’s what we’re QA-testing currently, and at least the fresh install was good for something (a QA-test), but it’d be the same as impish or 21.10
metapackages used: kubuntu-desktop
which was removed and then desktop-base
& wmmaker
(appeared to be smallest depends for desktop-base
…)