Currently, the login looks very cluttered, specially in smaller displays (in virtual machines, for example). Putting the media player and the lock that first screen that appears without the wallpaper being blurred might be better.
Also, the clock being in the authentication screen doesn't make too much sense, since it will be displayed in a very short time frame (when the user is inputting the password).
Previously I said that the media player should be also separated, but I wrote it wrong. I mean just about the clock.
If we removed the clock, people would complain that the lock and login screens were inconsistent with one another. We can use this bug report to track the general issue of the layout being rather cluttered on small screens/resolutions.
I thought of some changes that might help. Some buttons could be simplified in a bottom panel with the following: 1. A single shutdown button that shows all of the shutdown options, just like in Application Launcher when "show buttons for session" option is enabled (at the bottom right); 2. An keyboard button (at the bottom right); 3. A cog button for changing session options (at the bottom left).
If we did that, people would ignore them, and then complain that we hid them away when there was plenty of space to show them.
Hmm, understood. What about suggestion 2. It would align to Plasma panel design, where it has keyboard system tray applets at the bottom right. Also, in my opinion it might not be good to display way too technical information such as "X11" and "Xorg" in the current way SDDM is showing, so maybe the cog icon at the bottom left (or next to the password panel) would be great.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 433100 ***