Nody Greeter

A LightDM greeter made with Electron.js and NodeGTK

Web Greeter is created with Python... which sometimes is slow. So, I wanted to re-create it with Node.js!

This is a LightDM Greeter made with Electron.js and node-gtk that allows to create web based themes with HTMl, CSS and JavaScript. Also, this could be considered as a side project of web-greeter, both being equal in behavior, but this one is easier to mantain~

Features

• Create themes with HTML, CSS and JavaScript!
• Should work everywhere.
• JavaScript error handling, allowing to load the default theme.
• Themes could be simple, or very complex.
• Battery and brightness control.
• Multi-monitor support, thanks to s0
• TypeScript based.

Considerations

Themes working in web-greeter should work also here. All themes shipped with web-greeter are found here as well.

• icon_theme configuration is not loaded, as GTK apps don't allow to set a different X-Cursor-Theme

Dependencies

Build dependencies

• Node.js (v18 supported)
• Python 3 with distutils (setuptools)
• base-devel (build-essentials)

Common dependencies

lightdm gobject-introspection liblightdm-gobject-1-0 liblightdm-gobject-dev libgirepository1.0-dev libcairo2 libcairo2-dev libxcb1-dev libx11-dev

Installation

git clone --recursive https://github.com/JezerM/nody-greeter.git
cd nody-greeter
npm install
npm run rebuild
npm run build
sudo node make install

This will rebuild electron along with node-gtk, compile typescript with npx tsc, and then build the package root directory inside build/unpacked. Later, install it with node make install.

Also, you can package build/unpacked to whatever you want, like .deb with:

dpkg-deb --root-owner-group --build unpacked

Note

For Debian systems:

1. Copy build/DEBIAN/ to build/unpacked
2. In the control file, replace the liblightdm-gobject-1-dev dependency with liblightdm-gobject-dev. the liblightdm-gobject-1-dev package only exists in Ubuntu, the Debian equivalent is liblightdm-gobject-dev.

Setting up with LightDM

Inside /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, below a Seat configuration, add:

greeter-session=nody-greeter

Afterwards, restart the lightdm service.

Caution

Be sure that nody-greeter works before restarting lightdm

Installing Themes

All themes must be installed at /usr/share/web-greeter/themes/

View community themes: https://web-greeter-page.vercel.app/themes

Theme JavaScript API

To create themes for nody-greeter and web-greeter, check the documentation available at web-greeter-docs.

Also, you can install the TypeScript types definitions inside your theme with npm:

npm install nody-greeter-types

Additional features

Brightness control

acpi is the only tool needed to control the brightness, besides a compatible device. This functionality is based on acpilight replacement for xbacklight.

udev rules are needed to be applied before using it, check acpilight rules. Then, lightdm will need to be allowed to change backlight values, to do so add lightdm user to video group: sudo usermod -a -G video lightdm

You can enable it inside /etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml

Battery status

acpi and acpi_listen are the only tools you need (and a battery). This functionality is based on "bat" widget from "lain" awesome-wm library.

You can enable it inside /etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml.

Debugging

You can run the greeter from within your desktop session if you add the following line to the desktop file for your session located in /usr/share/xsessions/: X-LightDM-Allow-Greeter=true.

You have to log out and log back in after adding that line. Then you can run the greeter from command line.

Themes can be opened with a debug console if you set debug_mode as true inside /etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml. Or, you could run the nody-greeter with the parameter --debug. I recommend to use the last one, as it is easier and handy.

nody-greeter --debug

Check nody-greeter --help for more commands.

Note

Do not use lightdm --test-mode as it is not supported.

Troubleshooting

node-gyp fails on npm run rebuild

Supported Node.js versions: 16, 18, 20, 22.

Issues with distutils

Since python3.12, distutils was deprecated. For node-gyp to work, you must install the setuptools library for python, either with your package manager or pip.

Make sure you are using a node-gtk supported Node.js version.