Add a battery indicator on GDM screen

[dommy9111]

Binary package hint: gdm

I think that it would be useful to have a battery indicator on the GDM screen.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Mar 18 09:28:29 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release Candidate i386 (20091020.3)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gdm 2.28.1-0ubuntu2.1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.58-generic
SourcePackage: gdm
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-20-generic i686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, the current look is a design decision though, it makes the login screen nicer and laptop on battery usually don't sit on the login sceen doing nothing

[Bastler (mail-127oo1)]

You are right, Laptops don't usually sit around on the login screen while on battery. However, most Laptops don't have high-resolution hardware battery indicators, either. I own several identical batteries for my Laptop, usually some of them are fully charged, others are not. So having the battery icon on the gdm login screen would be a conveniant way to quickly check the battery state (e. g. before leaving the house), without the hassle of having to completely log in, open a desktop session, have all the autostart programs load automatically, causing the instant messenger to automatically go online, have the browser open your last visited website automatically on startup, all just to find out wether you can leave the charger at home or not.

I understand and generally support the ubuntu decision to aim for a very minimalistic, clean interface, but I also do think that the availability of electrical power - a very fundamental neccessity for operating a mobile computer (and over 50% of all new computers are mobile) - is a very essential, basic information, which I would like to be able to access at all times, logged in or not.

I am fine with having the battery icon hidden by default so new users are not overwhelmed with info, but I have definitely seen it on the lower panel of the login screen in one of the karmic alphas, so I know it has been programmed, and I would really like to have it back. My wild guess here is that it was tested, evaluated, abandoned and therefore the icon was hidden through some configuration parameter, rather than completely disassembled. Is there some clean way to turn it back on? (e. g. gconf-editor, recompile gdm...)