Hello:
I have upgraded from Ubuntu MATE 22.04.5 LTS to Ubuntu MATE 24.04.1 LTS. Not without a few problems. Little by little I am solving them. Although I am not happy with this update. On the laptop that I use most frequently, it has been a choice to do an update. But on two other computers I have found that it does not let me do a clean install from either Ubuntu MATE 22.04.5 LTS or Ubuntu MATE 24.04.1 LTS, which leads to having to install Ubuntu MATE prior to these two and do two update processes, which makes the process of installing and updating this distro double.
For all these and a few more reasons I am considering looking for another alternative to Ubuntu and even MATE as a desktop. I am sorry to say this because it has been my reference distro for many years. Hopefully all this will be resolved little by little, and the configuration process will gradually become easier and better documented than it has been lately.
But let's get back to the point at hand.
One of the things that I have misconfigured is that in the login manager the numeric keypad is disabled by default. My password has numbers and it is uncomfortable to have to activate it before or while entering the password. I am not used to doing this because it did not happen before. The conclusion is numerous errors before being able to enter the desktop, wasted time and frustration.
Looking for information in different sources on the subject:
There is a reference to activating the numeric keypad in the BIOS options. It is not my solution because it did not happen before and my BIOS does not give that option.
It also indicates that the numlockx package should be installed. And that it should be run in the startup applications. This is something I have already done. But it only affects once the session has started. So the login manager continues with the numeric keypad disabled.
As far as I've seen the login manager in Ubuntu MATE 24.04.1 LTS is "Lightdm".
Its configuration files are in "/etc/lightde/lightdm.d/"
And in this directory we find the following files:
In some old tutorials on this subject it is indicated to add the following line:
greeter-setup-script=/usr/bin/numlockx on
In the configuration file:
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
But neither the "greeter-setup-script" file nor the "lightdem.conf" file exist.
Can someone tell me how to make the numeric keypad start automatically enabled in the lightdm login manager by default instead of starting disabled?
Ok. Thanks. It works correctly now. It has a black background so I'll have to find a cool image for it. But the important thing is that the numeric keypad works correctly.
I don't understand why it changes to artic if it works incorrectly.
I hope that in future updates they correct it. And not having artic doesn't give me future problems with them.
I agree, slick greeter is so much more user friendly and functional I can't imagine why it went to artica greeter. I am guessing it followed a move by parent standard Ubuntu which seems to want to impose on users rather than listen to them
The GUI also has the option to change background and there are several backgrounds already to choose from and more to install, so that is pretty easy to accomplish
The reason:
The decision to switch to arctica-greeter was made along with the switch to Ayatana Indicators. It is briefly explained in the 22.10 Release Notes:
We’ve switched from Slick Greeter 1 to Arctica Greeter 5 (both forks of Unity Greeter)
Arctica Greeter integrates completely with Ayatana Indicators; so there is now a consistent Indicator experience in the greeter and desktop environment.
Arctic does work correctly, it just does not have a working GUI so it is terminal only.
Follow the link below to see how to do that:
As long as the Login/Displaymanager LightDM is used everything will work, both arctica-greeter and slick-greeter are a kind of plugins for LightDM.
Slick-greeter supports more desktops and is cross-distro and actually used a lot so it won't be going anywhere soon
