Hello,
I have a laptop with a 3456x2160 and the mouse cursor is very small on the login screen – the screen where one enters their password and chooses their desktop environment. The cursor also travels very slowly.
I believe the correct way to make the cursor larger is to edit one of the .conf files in /etc/lightdm/ directory but I’m not totally sure.
Can someone tell me which file to edit, what to change, and how to apply the changes?
Welcome to Fedora @wiking5
Are you using the Mate spin because of lighdm?
I started with Fedora Cinnamon Spin but I didn’t like Cinammon so I installed KDE Plasma and I am using KDE Plasma now.
But the screen that I am talking about should be on all of the Fedora distros.
It’s this screen shown in this photo here. You can see that the cursor is really small on my 3.5k laptop monitor; it is pictured just to the right of the password box. The mouse cursor tracks really slowly because the movement is pixel-by-pixel. So it takes a long time to move around the screen.
Ok, I got it. Lightdm is not the default desktop manager for KDE, you might have to test SDDM.
If you have Cinnamon still installed, you should be able to change the cursor for Lightdm in the settings and make the settings system wide.
I tried with Cinammon desktop and searched for “lightdm” which took me to System Settings → Login Window.
I went the the “Settings” tab here and set HiDPI support to “Enable;” this fixed the mouse tracking speed and also made the password box larger.
Next, under the “Appearance” tab, I doubled the “mouse pointer size” from 24 to 48. This fixed the pointer size.
I noticed that the date/time changed on the /etc/lightdm/slick-greeter.conf file had changed so I looked at the contents.
This is what was written:
[Greeter]
enable-hidpi=on
only-on-monitor=auto
cursor-theme-size=48
I will mark this as the “solution” but I really wish there were an easier way to do this within KDE.
I don’t understand why KDE doesn’t have any way to edit these settings and why it configures SDDM rather than lightdm (correct?).
As mentioned already, GDM works best with Gnome. Lightdm came out with Mate and Cinnamon. And KDE used to use SSDM. Everyone has is pros and cons. But not all work the same way with the different DE’s.
As you found out, KDE as example has not the GUI tools to manage Lightdm. It was not created with it and that’s why they are not there.
Understood. Thanks.
At this point, would it be easier to reinstall Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop from scratch, or can I go back and make these differences work in KDE? I already have a bunch of apps installed and the multimedia codecs were a pain to do. Maybe I can install SDDM or maybe I can get the launcher for lightdm-settings working in KDE.
I can find the “Login Window” launcher from Cinnamon in KDE Plasma but it doesn’t launch here. The launcher runs “pkexec lightdm-settings.” This works fine when I click on the icon for “Login Window” within Cinammon but if I click on the same icon under KDE it asks me for root password but then does nothing. However, if I open a Konsole window I can type “pkexec lightdm-settings,” enter my password and then the “Login Window” dialog for lightdm will show and I can edit the settings there.
I’m not sure why the launcher doesn’t work in KDE. Maybe it is related to the asking for a password.
The password you get asked because of the system wide settings. This you just can do with sudo/root.
You have to create a new shortcut in KDE then and start a helper-script with the content of the command you used in KDE Terminal. While creating the shortcut you have to write that it has to been started in a terminal.
At least this way I do it when I have to include the terminal to run a command.
How does this sound?
I made launch_login_settings.sh script with one line and put it someplace in /opt.
sudo pkexec lightdm-settings
I did chmod 777 on this .sh script and it launches the “Login Window” settings fine from the console i.e. :
./opt/launch_login_settings.sh
The above works fine …
However if I try to launch this script using a shortcut from KDE it will ask for the sudo password but then the console will sit there and do nothing; the terminal stays open, but it has no output and nothing happens. So clearly the sudo part is completing but nothing else is happening. The “Login Window” settings for lightdm does not launch.
Do not forget to launch it from from terminal to include in your shortcut.
I create in my home directory a sub-directory called bin. If you have a look in the .bashrc file you can see that this then is already in the path variable.
Sorry I just edited my post. Please see what I did there because I changed it.
For the KDE shortcut I did go to “Advanced Settings” and made sure to launch it from the terminal and also instructed the terminal to stay open.
I said I put it in /opt/ and then just used the full path to the file in the KDE shortcut. I changed it to ~/bin as you suggested.
In either /opt, using the full path, or else using ~/bin as you suggested I get the same error message:
Warning: Could not start program ‘/home/wiking/bin/launch_login_settings.sh’ with arguments ‘’.
Warning: Child process set up failed: execve: Exec format error
EDIT:
I got it working by editing the shortcut for the existing “Login Window” KDE shortcut.
For program: I used “sudo” for Arguments I used “pkexec lightdm-settings.” Under “advaced options” I chose “run in terminal.” This works fine, but this method does not use a helper script.
The only drawback is that “run in terminal” prevents the shortcut from storing the password so I need to enter password in the console every time I run the “Login Window” shortcut. If I don’t do “run in terminal,” though, it doesn’t work at all.
You gave full access to the script … nogo … use chmod +x instead.
Even better … just remove the script then.
Tzzzz … how many times you have to change your login settings? Generally once when you install the OS, right.
The password you stored are for your user … when you run it with sudo it might be the root user so it not get stored.
Thanks. The shortcut is probably “good enough” at this point.
Can you think of anything else that might be screwed up when running KDE Plasma on top of the Cinnamon Spin distro?
I appreciate your help.
Mostly it is the Login,Screensaver and Power-saving you have to do manually.
Best ist when you run Cinnamon and go thru the settings to find this points. Then check if you have access from KDE to this apps.