The current GNOME release in Debian 7 is 3.4. Ifyou install the gnome meta package, all major GNOME applications as well as the window and display managers, will be installed. Configuration is pretty straightforward, as the user menu provides a System Settings application to access the major settings of your workspace in order to alter how it looks and feels.
Modifying the GNOME login screen, GDM3, ifyou don't want the default behavior, requires manual editing of /etc/gdm3/greeter .gsettings and /etc/gdm3/ daemon. conf as the root user. Then execute the dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 command.
Part of the reason for this is that GDM is being integrated more fully into GNOME, and is being moved to the dconf settings framework from the old GNOME 2 gconf based settings. At some point, the GNOME control center should provide the appropriate utility but, at this time, there is no official GDM3 setup utility. An unofficial utility called gdm3setup exists, but has not found its way into Debian, yet.
