Slim display manager is a great peace of software. Below, is a tutorial how to apply themes to it. Proceed with caution. If you do not know what you are doing look help before continuing. Otherwise you might break something you do not want to.
Note. Users of PostX Gnu/Linux will only need to take steps 6 and 7 if they want to change to another slim-ntheme (slim nthemes are already installed) which should take about 3 minutes. Also, in PostX it is good enough if you just exit the desktop to apply changes.
How to apply
1.Download the theme
2.Copy it to /usr/share/slim/themes (example sudo cp -R /home/myusername/theme /usr/share/slim/themes)
3. List all the available Slim themes and choose what you want: ls /usr/share/slim/themes
4. Modify: /etc/slim.conf file: sudo geany /etc/slim.conf
You can use any text-editor instead of geany. However, Abiword might break files if you accidentally save if as the default abw.
5. If you use startx, which is likely, make sure that you have the following lines like this:
login_cmd exec /bin/sh – ~/.xinitrc %session
#login_cmd exec /bin/bash -login /etc/X11/Xsession %session
The above makes sure that Slim looks .xinitrc startup file within your user’s home folder:
Here is a quick example of .xinitrc if you are just about to create one:
#.xinitrc example file
#These are comments, which will not be read
#Make sure you have & at the end of all common programs (unless otherwise advised) you might want to start.
#The last line starts the Window manager and it should not contain &
tint2 &
xset -dpms s off &
xbindkeys &
exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch –exit-with-session openbox
More on the topic: https://www.techtimejourney.net/autostarting-applications-with-xinitrc/
6. Change your theme name to to point to the theme you want to use (done within /etc/slim.conf). For example:
# current theme, use comma separated list to specify a set to
# randomly choose from
current_theme Orientation
7. Save the file and quit your desktop or restart your computer. If you are installing Slim just now the better choice is to restart your computer – so that your system can actually start running Slim on its initial startup.