Hello guys. I noticed that the default gnome login screen is just plain grey. How can I add a background to make it look better ?

Thank you in advance for the attention.

I haven't used Gnome in years but last time I did, you had to compile in the backgrounds. Not as in with a C compiler but some gsettings (?) process. That might have changed in later versions. It wasn't as easy (unfortunately) as using a configuration dialog to just change the background. Some of them are hideous (Ubuntu) for example...sorry, that wasn't very helpful!

Did you try this: https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-cha...und-in-ubuntu/

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^The theme CSS may be located elsewhere, too. E.g.
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita-dark/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

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Why the f#^%k is so complicated to do this? I mean, in other desktop environments you can do that with a few clicks. What were they smoking when they decided that ?

I don't do that beacause I'm scared of breaking something beacuse in the adwaita folder it says that gtk.css is no more in use.

Yeah, don't get me started on Gnome's simplicity and complexity quandary....the DE aims to be simple yet implements things in the most convoluted way.

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It doesn't make sense! GNOME is my favorite DE, but sometimes is just bul##^%#it.

Agree. I have actually been using Gnome since the version 1.0 days. Once 3.0 came out I freaked out and jumped ship. I have used it on and off since but some deal breaker always drives me away: tracker, hideous GDM screens, etc. I can live with the GDM screens but tracker I can't live with. Very frustrating.

What is tracker ?

Tracker is a file indexer which is included in all Gnome installs. It runs 3 or 4 processes that "index" files in the user's /home. I have never figured out its purpose other than to aid searches, but I never need to search in my /home because I know where everything is: I am the one that put it there so of course I know where it is. It can be a performance killer so I normally disable it by copying the autostart files from /etc/xdg/autostart to /home/<username>/.config/<I forget directory> and toggling the autostart param in each to "no" or "false". This did not work in the last iteration of Gnome I tried (3.36?) so I gave up and went back to Mate`, which is essentially Gnome 2.x, my old time favorite.

I am sure tracker has a purpose other than to just eat CPU cycles but I have never found a use for it...

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I changed that file I edited it like this: file:///home/Pitcures/picture.jpeg. restarted the machine and nothing changed (currently using default adwaita).

The default theme is probably packed into /usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource. Try this recipe then.

Not so simple.

"Note:

Since GNOME 3.16, GNOME Shell themes are now stored as binary files (gresource).
This change will be overwritten on subsequent updates of gnome-shell.

Firstly, you need to extract the existing GNOME Shell theme to a folder in your home directory. You can do this using the following script:

extractgst.sh

#!/bin/sh
gst=/usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource
workdir=${HOME}/shell-theme

for r in `gresource list $gst`; do
r=${r#\/org\/gnome\/shell/}
if [ ! -d $workdir/${r%/*} ]; then
mkdir -p $workdir/${r%/*}
fi
done

for r in `gresource list $gst`; do
gresource extract $gst $r >$workdir/${r#\/org\/gnome\/shell/}
done

Navigate to the created directory. You should find that the theme files have been extracted to it. Now copy your preferred background image to this directory.

Next, you need to create a file in the directory with the following content:

gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gresources>
<gresource prefix="/org/gnome/shell/theme">
<file>calendar-today.svg</file>
<file>checkbox-focused.svg</file>
<file>checkbox-off-focused.svg</file>
<file>checkbox-off.svg</file>
<file>checkbox.svg</file>
<file>dash-placeholder.svg</file>
<file>gnome-shell.css</file>
<file>gnome-shell-high-contrast.css</file>
<file>icons/message-indicator-symbolic.svg</file>
<file>icons/pointer-double-click-symbolic.svg</file>
<file>icons/pointer-drag-symbolic.svg</file>
<file>icons/pointer-primary-click-symbolic.svg</file>
<file>icons/pointer-secondary-click-symbolic.svg</file>
<file>key-enter.svg</file>
<file>key-hide.svg</file>
<file>key-layout.svg</file>
<file>key-shift-latched-uppercase.svg</file>
<file>key-shift.svg</file>
<file>key-shift-uppercase.svg</file>
<file>no-events.svg</file>
<file>noise-texture.png</file>
<file>filename</file>
<file>no-notifications.svg</file>
<file>pad-osd.css</file>
<file>process-working.svg</file>
<file>toggle-off-dark.svg</file>
<file>toggle-off-hc.svg</file>
<file>toggle-off.svg</file>
<file>toggle-on-dark.svg</file>
<file>toggle-on-hc.svg</file>
<file>toggle-on.svg</file>
</gresource>
</gresources>

Replace filename with the filename of your background image.

Now, open the gnome-shell.css file in the directory and change the #lockDialogGroup definition as follows:

#lockDialogGroup {
background: #2e3436 url(filename);
background-size: [WIDTH]px [HEIGHT]px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

Set background-size to the resolution that GDM uses, this might not necessarily be the resolution of the image. For a list of display resolutions see Display resolution. Again, set filename to be the name of the background image.

Finally, compile the theme using the following command:

$ glib-compile-resources gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml

Then copy the resulting gnome-shell-theme.gresource file to the /usr/share/gnome-shell directory.

Then restart gdm.service (note that simply logging out is not enough) and you should find that it is using your preferred background image.

For more information, please see the following forum thread. "

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GDM

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^And that article in ArchWiki also includes this warning:

In Fedora, there is an easy way.

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