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!
- Install Wallpaper Tray (or any other kind of changer):
sudo apt-get install wallpaper-tray (for example
)
- Add it to you panel:
Wallpaper as panel applet
- Configure it
Adding directories with images
Setting timed wallpaper
- Install wallpaper_daemon, following instructions here
- Test it! (a simple logout should work)
Acknowledgments
Thanks vivin for this great post about putting images side by side!