Ubuntu – How to create the own ubuntu theme?

Caution: Do not try this if you are not completely comfortable booting without X to repair lightdm configuration.

The package lightdm-webkit-greeter is not included in the ubuntu repository yet. To build your own greeter with HTML, CSS and Javascript, you'll have to download and install the lightdm-webkit-greeter code from Launchpad (lp:lightdm-webkit-greeter). I also merged in the changes in lp:~elementaryart/lightdm-webkit-greeter/fixes-ubuntu-old

You'll then have to alter the Lightdm configuration to use the webkit greeter as opposed to unity (or whatever was default).

I believe there is a bug in the lightdm-webkit-greeter.conf file, where it refers to a webkit-theme called "default", that should be "webkit".

I currently use the webkit greeter to log in and can tell you that it is slow and unpolished at the moment.

Step by step:

(be prepared to fix the greeter configuration without a GUI if this fails)

1. bzr branch lp:lightdm-webkit-greeter
2. cd lightdm-webkit-greeter
3. bzr merge lp:~elementaryart/lightdm-webkit-greeter/fixes-ubuntu-old
4. ./autogen.sh (you'll have to install some dependencies here - probably only libwebkit-dev)
5. make
6. sudo make install
7. gksudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
8. Set greeter-session=lightdm-webkit-greeter (remember the old setting as a fallback if you can't log in with your new settings)
9. gksudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm-webkit-greeter.conf
10. Set the webkit-theme=webkit

This should work to enable the default webkit login. Now you can edit the theme here:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/lightdm-webkit/themes/webkit/index.html

Edit: Another warning - you can seemingly lock yourself out of gnome if this does not work.

I took a look at the source code for gnome-control-center (specifically the cc-background-panel.c file) and found the answer. The list appears to be hard-coded in the source:

static gchar *themes[] = { "Adwaita", "Ambiance", "Radiance", "HighContrast",
    "HighContrastInverse" };

This was added by Ubuntu (in 04_add_theme_selection.patch) to the original gnome 3 gnome-control-center source. It appears that they did not plan to allow anyone to add 11.10 themes at this time. Presumably the list will be editable or generated dynamically in future versions of Ubuntu's theme selection patch.