Update February 9th: the author of former wallpaper_daemon created a very cool debian package, check it out here!

One of the first thing I do, whenever I re-install my Ubuntu installation (when I’m bothered of upgrading it instead ^_^), is configuring a wallpaper changer.
I know, it is pointless to change your background automatically on some event (external or time-based), but it is one of these little bells and whistles you don’t need but you really became addicted to. After all there are billions and zillions of great wallpaper, why I have to choose just one of them?
(and a round robin based wallpaper let you work much better, so why not having it?)

Ok, let’s cut out this non-sense and let me give you the recipe for an automatic, time-based background changer for your desktop and GDM login.

What we are aiming at

Your favourite timed-wallpaper

Your xsplash after this guide

We want a wallpaper that changes every <n> hours/minutes/seconds, and we want the gdm background changes too.
More in details, we want our next gdm login be the last wallpaper we had on our last logout.

What we need

• a wallpaper changer. In principle you need an external application: I use Wallpaper Tray, but maybe you can experiment with any other (Wally seems really promising), and KDE4 should have a built-in feature.
• a wallpaper daemon. Well you need THIS wallpaper daemon. This is the app in charge to set your gdm background.

Let’s bake them!

1. Install Wallpaper Tray (or any other kind of changer):
   
sudo apt-get install wallpaper-tray (for example )

2. Add it to you panel:
   

   Wallpaper as panel applet

3. Configure it
   

   Adding directories with images

   

   Setting timed wallpaper

4. Install wallpaper_daemon, following instructions here
5. Test it! (a simple logout should work)

Acknowledgments

Thanks vivin for this great post about putting images side by side!

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