Unity-Greeter : no language selector is available

[David Gómez]

LightDM 0.9.8 added a language selector for the login screen, but it doesn't seem to be availaible in the unity greeter

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

Same here, it appears to be a feature of lightdm-gtk-greeter, and unity-greeter does not support it. Adding show-language-selector=true in unity-greeter.conf does nothing.

This is a necessary feature for some users. My desktop is used by two users, one of whom types on QWERTY and one of whom (me) types on Dvorak. The inability to select the language in the Unity greeter for entering the password will make it impractical to use.

[David Gómez (dabisu)]

Yes. This is a bad regression from 11.04. Sometimes one user needs different languages to login with. I had four languages installed in 11.04, and now what i'm supposed to do? Create four users with different languages just for me? :(

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Tristan, do you just need a keyboard switcher? See bug 834487.

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

Thanks, that's what I was looking for.

So is this a dupe or is a language selector different from a keyboard layout switcher?

[David Gómez (dabisu)]

It's different. It's about select between different languages using the same keyboard layout.

[Aslam Muhammad (aslamckra)]

An option to change the language in greeter( as it was before in gdm) is a welcome wishlist. To change language in language settings is not that user friendly. Once added a language needs to drag to top above where there is 'English' is written to change the language. Why it needs to be so complicated just selecting the preferred language in a drop down list will do the trick.

[David Gómez (dabisu)]

Is Precise going to be released without this fixed?

[Alex Bachmeier (cebalrai)]

Considering the enterpise nature of the LTS release, this will be a serious hinderance to using lightdm in environments with many users.

[AlbertJB (albertjb)]

Hi, still no able to add language selector to unity-greeter, sorry fo my ignorance but is this a bug or is it a feature that will be added soon... or never? Could you confirm this to me please?

I don't use Unity, I prefer gnome-classic, but I like the unity-lightdm and I would like to select between English and Catalan when logging in. I've tested /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf, which allows choosing the language at the logging screen, but I don't like the interface.

So I'd really appreciate having this feature in unity-lightdm. I hope anybody will answer my questions above.

Thanks in advance.

[David Gómez (dabisu)]

Gosset, i don't know... You may see when I reported this bug: October 2011. And here we have 12.04 without this bug fixed. Although the bug state is Confirmed, considering that it's easy to solve it and that it's a feature _already_ present in LightDM I'm starting to suspect that this is another bug that won't be solved because it doesn't fits in the "design plans" of the omniscient unity design team.

[David Gómez (dabisu)]

Wishlist. Yeah. Be honest please. After two years (i'm the original bug reporter), change the state to "Wishlist" becomes synonym with "Won't Fix". So please be honest, tell us that this problem doesn't fit with "Canonical global plans for Unity" or something like that, and change the state to "Won't Fix".