Apparently I am not the only one that thinks that the Debian graphics are appalling:

Debian did have a design contest of sorts, well a brief mailing list thread that had the impossible task of voting the best out of just a handful of rubbish themes.  Given the choices, personally I would have opted for the upstream themes, or just to stick with the Debian Lenny theme which was perfectly okay.

I do wonder how easy or difficult it is to submit themes - do you have to be a Debian developer?  If so, then they should really think about lowering the bar.  I’m sure that I could produce something better, although my last attempt does not appear to be getting widespread approval.

Anyhow, we don’t love Debian for how pretty is looks - we can soon change the theme if it bothers us.

If you install kde from a Debian base install, then it is likely that you do not have the attractive new Debian theming for the boot loader and KDM login. The key to this is the installation of desktop-base, but you do need a few other packages, which don’t currently get treated as dependencies.

Install packages

$ sudo aptitude install desktop-base ksplash-engine-moodin kdmtheme splashy splashy-themes

Add splashy to grub

Look for the kopt line in /boot/grub/menu.lst and add quiet splash vga=791:

N.B. vga=791 is suitable for 1024x768, if your monitor resolution is below this, then you should change this number by reference to the table below.

/boot/grub/menu.lst:
# kopt=root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash vga=791

N.B. Do not uncomment this line, this line is not used itself, but is used by update-grub to automatically populate the actual kernel lines further down

Then update-grub to apply this change to your kernels:

$ sudo update-grub

Splashy VGA settings table

The 65000 colour line is the one recommended for this purpose, so you’ll probably want 785 or 788 if you have a low resolution netbook. I don’t believe there is any point in increasing to 794, as I believe the new Debian themes have been designed for 1024x768 (I have not checked that fact).

Configure KDM themes

Under KDE Control Panel, System Administration, KDM Theme Manager, enter Administrator Mode and enable KDM Themes and select “More Blue Orbit”. It will warn you that your changes will be overwritten by /etc/default/kdm.d/, but this step still seems to be required.

Remove Login Manager Background

Under KDE Control Panel, System Administration, Login Manager, select the Background tab and disable the background. This background displays after your new KDM Theme and before your actual desktop, which is definitely one background too many!