How To Install lightdm on Kali Linux

In this tutorial we learn how to install lightdm on Kali Linux. lightdm is simple display manager

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install lightdm on Kali Linux.

What is lightdm

lightdm is:

An X display manager that:

  • Has a lightweight codebase
  • Is standards compliant (PAM, ConsoleKit, etc)
  • Has a well defined interface between the server and user interface
  • Fully themeable
  • Cross-desktop (greeters can be written in any toolkit)

Additional software can be useful along with LightDM:

  • xserver-xephyr can be used to add a nested X display by calling ‘dm-tool add-nested-seat`
  • upower can be used to suspend the computer from the display manager
  • accountsservice is used to populate a user list with addition information.

There are three methods to install lightdm on Kali Linux. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install lightdm Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install lightdm using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install lightdm

Install lightdm Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install lightdm using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install lightdm

Install lightdm Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude on Kali Linux first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Kali Linux. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install lightdm using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install lightdm

How To Uninstall lightdm on Kali Linux

To uninstall only the lightdm package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove lightdm

Uninstall lightdm And Its Dependencies

To uninstall lightdm and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Kali Linux, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove lightdm

Remove lightdm Configurations and Data

To remove lightdm configuration and data from Kali Linux we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge lightdm

Remove lightdm configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove lightdm configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge lightdm

Dependencies

lightdm have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install lightdm package on Kali Linux using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.