Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.5.1) OS: Linux Currently, to get a smooth transition between KDM and KSplash, both need to be manually set to the same background image - and KSplash does not even allow for changing the background image via GUI, so the user has no way to get a good transition if he changes his KDM settings. So I suggest to change the default KSplash to read the KDM settings for the background image. Reproducible: Always
reading kdm's settings would be way too complex and inflexible. ksplash should have a mode where it simply takes a screenshot of the background and proceeds from there.
But won't that screenshot also contain the GUI to enter username and password?
one would suppose that i have thought that far. ;)
So I assume you are working on either KDM or KSplash? Sorry ;-) However, for the danger of getting the same reply again (and not knowing how you mean to deal with the mentioned issue) - KSplash should not break or look ugly if used with GDM or another login manager. Again, sorry if that has also already been though off.
startkde already contains code to detect whether kdm should have already set up a background (grep for ",auto"). i wouldn't worry too much about *which* background kdm has set, because if the ksplash theme doesn't look well with that background, everything is lost look-wise anyway (as the change from the kdm background to the ksplash background would look just as terrible). a manual switch would also be an option, though not a particularly user-friendly one. maybe as an override "ignore kdm's background".
Pardus has a dirty patch[1] for this purpose. If the theme file has the following line: KEEP_XDM_BACKGROUND ON it keeps the background same. It also checks XDM_MANAGED for auto-login cases.
Forgot to give link: http://websvn.pardus.org.tr/pardus/2011/devel/desktop/kde/base/kdebase-workspace/files/pardus/ksplashx-keep-xdm-background.patch?revision=98570&view=markup
It is even worse with KDE 4.6 where this new background (that reminds me of those Half-Life 2 energy orbs) is optimized for 16:9. It looks really bad on a 4:3 screen. At kdm it‘s all fine but then ksplash always resizes it to fit the screen and it looks really bad, the circles are distorted and stuff.
Both KDM and KSplash? (the thing you see while KDE is loading) have the same background image. However, KDM scales & crops it, while KSplash scales it without cropping. Because of that, the background 'jumps' right after the password is entered. I suggest using the same scale&crop technique in both of them.
I looked at the ksplash folder and there actually are files for different resolutions/aspect ratios. So if we just crop them to fit the resolution (the distortion in 4.6 I think is just with non-16:9 images) this at least would remove the symptoms (the uglyness) for the out of the box experience
Just noticed on my notebook. With KDE 4.7 now KSplash also respects the picture’s aspect ratio and so no distortions anymore between KDM and KSplash :) Unfortunately now it doesn’t recognize multi monitor configurations anymore and stretches the picture throught the entire X