LightDM

LightDM is a cross-desktop display manager whose aim is to be the standard display manager for the X server.

The key features (as listed by upstream) include:


 * A well-defined greeter API allowing multiple GUIs
 * Support for all display manager use cases, with plugins where appropriate
 * Low code complexity
 * Fast performance

Emerge
Install lightdm:

Configuration
The (global) configuration file for LightDM can be found at:



KDE
The LightDM KDE greeter also provides a KCM (KDE Control Module), which appears in the System Settings under →.

Due to LightDM currently assuming GTK+ greeter as the default, if the KDE greeter is requested, it needs to be specified in the file:

RazorQt
The RazorQt greeter currently does not offer any configuration options.

OpenRC
Set LightDM as the default display manager:

To start LightDM on boot, add dbus and xdm to the default runlevel. dbus is necessary because LightDM depends on it to pass messages:

To start LightDM now:

systemd
To start LightDM on boot:

To start LightDM now:

Command-line tool
LightDM includes a command-line tool,, which can be used to switch user sessions, lock the current seat, etc. To see a list of available commands, use the  option:

For example, to lock the current seat:

Cursor themes not working
As of March 28, 2015, the stable versions of lightdm (lightdm-1.10.3) and lightdm-gtk-greeter (lightdm-gtk-greeter-1.7.0) have a bug that affects some DEs such as XFCE with setting the mouse cursor. Applications will apply the new mouse theme, but the root window where the window manager draws on does not. To get around this, simply unmask the latest versions (lightdm-1.13.2 and lightdm-gtk-greeter-2.0.0 at the time of writing) and the cursors will be set correctly.

More information can be found in Ubuntu's bug #1024482.