It appears that the default panel layout has changed between lightdm-gtk-greeter versions <v2.0.2> and <v2.0.3>, although this is not mentioned in the changelog. Specifically, the language selector, session/environment selector, accessibility options, and reboot/poweroff menu have all disappeared. The default now seems to be to display only the hostname and clock in the panel.
Rather than using the default, the panel layout can be explicitly controlled with the "indicators" option in the config file </etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf>. This patch approximates the previous default configuration: --- unpack/etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf 2017-12-09 15:38:30.000000000 -0800 +++ /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf 2017-12-21 23:27:25.998580178 -0800 @@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ #xft-dpi= #xft-hintstyle= #xft-rgba= -#indicators= +indicators=~clock;~spacer;~host;~spacer;~language;~session;~power #clock-format= #keyboard= #reader= This at least restores the reboot/poweroff function. However, problems with the other functions remain: - both the Debian and upstream changelogs indicate that the accessibility options have been removed, for unspecified reasons. This being so, the comment in <lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf> offering the "~a11y" option should also be removed, to avoid confusion. - the language selector does not now work, and has not worked for a long time. Apparently, this is not considered to be a problem. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=765077 - the session selector defaults to whatever the previous user chose, which is clearly absurd. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=838610 Hopefully, these long-standing problems can be fixed, and lightdm can be restored to the functionality it once had, but no longer does. Wasn't the progressive removal of functionality from Gnome and GDM, the reason why lightdm was started in the first place? -- Ian Bruce
