animate your desktop in linux

I've always wanted to have a slideshow of pictures for my desktop instead of just having 1 static image. I now know of 2 ways to do this. One I scripted myself, and another is program I found and learned to utilize which works better and is better.

First I'll detail my script, but be sure to continue to read further down as a better solution exists!

I initially created a script for GNOME that I was able to point to a directory full of images and have it randomly display a picture from the directory of images as my background. I then created a cronjob to execute the script so about every couple hours I would have a new backgroup.

NOTE: This will only work in GNOME 2.x as the script utilizes gconftool-2. I'm sure it can be modified to work with other versions of GNOME as well.

• Create the script!
  
  • vi chgBackground.sh
    
  • #!/bin/sh
    
    PID=$$
    
    PHOTO_DIR=$1
    
    if [[ -z ${PHOTO_DIR} ]]; then
    echo "You must specify a directory that has your photos."
    exit 1
    fi
    
    if [[ ! -d ${PHOTO_DIR} ]]; then
    echo "Directory '${PHOTO_DIR}' does not exist."
    exit 1
    fi
    
    # Look for files with extension .jpg or .png
    PIC_COUNT="`find ${PHOTO_DIR} -iregex ".*\.\(jpg\|png\)$" | wc -l`"
    
    if [[ ${PIC_COUNT} -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "No pictures found!"
    exit 1
    fi
    
    find ${PHOTO_DIR} -iregex ".*\.\(jpg\|png\)$" > /tmp/chgBackground.${PID}
    
    RANDOM=${PID}
    RAN_VAR=`echo $[(${RANDOM} % ${PIC_COUNT}) + 1]`
    
    BKG_PATH=`head -${RAN_VAR} /tmp/chgBackground.${PID} | tail -1`
    
    /opt/gnome/bin/gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename ${BKG_PATH}
    
    rm -f /tmp/chgBackground.${PID}
    
• Set perms to execute the script
  
  • chmod +x chgBackground.sh
• Run the script!
  
  • chgBackground.sh /path/to/pics
• Schedule in crontab to run automatically
  
  • crontab -e
  • Add the following to change every hour:
    
    • 0 * * * * sh -x /path/to/script/chgBackground.sh > /dev/null

I later learned of a program called xwinwrap. This binary allows you to run a program over your desktop. That is to say you could use this program to have VLC playing a video and make that your background. Below are the steps I used to have gslideshow from xscreensaver run as my background, with glslideshow configured to point to a directory full of images.

• Download xwinwrap from http://tech.shantanugoel.com/projects/linux/shantz-xwinwrap
• unzip the downloaded file

Now, the command I use is:

• /path/to/xwinwrap -fs -st -sp -b -ov -- /usr/lib64/xscreensaver/glslideshow -window-id WID -duration 8 -pan 8 -fade 2 &

What the above command does is:

• -fs : parameter for xwinwrap to run fullscreen
• -st and -sp : I set these so that when xwinwrap runs it does not show up with a program window in the "Workspace Switcher" applet
• -b : This has xwinwrap run below GNOME panels
• -ov : This allows xwinwrap to run in all virtual desktops
• -- /usr/lib64/xscreensaver/glslideshow -window-id WID -duration 8 -pan 8 -fade 2 : This is an argument passwed to xwinwrap of the command you pass to xwinwrap to be run over your desktop
  
  • -window-id WID : parameter for glslideshow to run fullscreen in your GNOME window
  • -duration 8 : parameter for glslideshow on how long to have a single photo displayed
  • -pan 8 : how long to pan the image for (if less then duration it will pan the image over 2 cycles for same image)
  • -fade 2 : parameter for glslideshow on how to to fade between images
• & : allows xwinwrap to run in the background

To set the imageDirectory for glslideshow to use:

• vi ~/.xscreensaver
  
  • edit/add the line containing "imageDirectory" to point to the directory of images
    
    • EXAMPLE:
      imageDirectory: /path/to/images
      

You can obviously change the argument you pass to xwinwrap to run different image/video applications to have overlayed over your desktop.