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First of all, I know that SDDM is not part of KDE and that screen locking is technically a separate issue. But from a user perspective all those things are basically the same.

However, right now they are configured in two distinct places and each of them behaves slightly different from the other. As an end user it feels like I need to configure the same things twice and they still don't look the same.

Let me walk you through all the settings necessary to set up your account identity from a user perspective and point out the issues.

SDDM-related settings are configured under "Startup and Shutdown" in Systemsettings which makes sense. So first of all I set up my login theme and a background. First thing I notice is that although I did that, the login manager still uses the default background. This is a know bug (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344867).

Then I have a look at "Desktop Session". Not much I can configure there.

Alright, let's go back. Where can I configure things about myself? Probably in Account Details. First thing that irritates me: although it clearly says "Account Details", the first KCM I see is about KDE Wallet. Alright, that has certainly something to do with my account, but KWallet was actually not the thing I expected first. Anyway, I clicked once more and managed to set up a name and a user icon.

Next thing I notice: although I set an icon and although there is also a symlink at ~/face.icon which SDDM should use, I still see a default user icon. This is also a known bug (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350434).

Finished. Everything set up, right? I lock the screen and want to grab some coffee when I notice that everything I just configured does not apply to the lock screen. Okay, my user icon is there (which in turn is missing in SDDM). And If I had set no user icon, I would actually see a Breeze-themed default icon (which again I wouldn't in SDDM). Weird, isn't it? Yes, that is pretty confusing. Now assume, SDDM had actually honored my background settings. I would be totally confused why the hell I'm seeing the default background again. In fact, I'm not, because SDDM has a bug. But lets also assume for the moment that I'm an advanced user and I know that I'm in fact not looking at SDDM right now and therefore should see a proper background.

But where the hell do I find the settings to configure the background for the screen locker? It makes absolutely no sense, but after clicking through all possible KCMs I find it under "Workspace Behavior". Well, it makes sense from a technical standpoint, but for me as a user it is completely arbitrary. Eventually I set up a background image, so that my lockscreen now finally looks the same as my login screen.

Does it? No. SDDM still uses Deja-vu Sans, although all the rest of my desktop is using Oxygen fonts. Can I change that somewhere? No, probably not without modifying some SDDM config files or even the Breeze theme. I give up.

So, here are my suggestions:

Get rid of Workspace Behavior/Screen Locking
Maybe make locking settings a separate KCM, maybe put it under Account Details or as a user-dependent setting in the SDDM KCM. But right now it makes no sense. Also remove the wallpaper setting completely (see below).

Change how the SDDM/lock screen wallpapers are handled
Having a background image setting for SDDM makes sense (if it actually worked) since it is user-independent. For the lock screen, however, it makes no sense whatsoever to have a separate setting. Both look so similar that we really don't need to tell anyone that they are technically different things.
So for the wallpaper either automatically use the SDDM wallpaper or do it like LightDM on Ubuntu and use the (front-)users desktop wallpaper. I would prefer the latter, but that requires two things:

1. A privacy setting so the user can choose to show the default wallpaper on the lock screen instead of his own
2. Proper scaling. Right now both SDDM and the lock screen just stretch the image over the screen. That looks weird already when the image has a different aspect ratio than the monitor, but also introduces weird transitions when switching between desktop (with proper scaling) and lock screen (without proper scaling).

Whatever option you choose, 2. would be nice anyway.

Use the default KDE font also as default font for SDDM
This one should be self-explanatory.

Fix the user icon bug in SDDM and use a proper Breeze-themed default icon
We don't need no consistency.

Fix SDDM multi-screen support
Okay, this one is out of scope of this posting, but also a big issue. Therefore let me put this here as a little reminder.
The lockscreen handles multiple screens as well as KDE does overall with multi-screens (i.e. okay if you have a static setup), but SDDM just shows a black screen with default X11 cursor, which is actually pretty ugly.

Comments? I think solving these issues is pretty crucial for good usability of the Plasma5 desktop. But maybe you have better solutions on how we can do it.

Any comments on this?

I found this thinking there might be a solution, but found out this has been an issue since 2015. Event worse there seems to be no interest in this problem ....