Installation

There is a PPA for crebs, but it is only available for Ubuntu Natty and below.

In Ubuntu Natty,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:crebs/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install crebs

For Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10, the PPA will still work, but you will need to add it manually to the sources.list.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines to the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/crebs/ppa/ubuntu natty main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/crebs/ppa/ubuntu natty main

Save (Ctrl + O) and exit (Ctrl + X) the file. Next, in your terminal,

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys EF0A4C44
 sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install crebs

Creating custom slideshow

Run the crebs (Create Background Slideshow) app.

Click the “+” button to add wallpapers. You can select multiple wallpapers.

Rearrange (using the < and > buttons) the wallpapers to the order you want them to display.

Once you are done with the images, you can click on the Slideshow tab to configure the length of the slideshow.

Lastly, enter a name for your slideshow and click the “Tick” button to save.

Activating the slideshow

Even after you have saved the file, it won’t appear in the Appearance section. We have to configure the setting manually.

In your terminal, type

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file://$HOME/.crebs/my-wonderful-slideshow.xml"

Replace “my-wonderful-slideshow” with the name of the slideshow that you have saved earlier.

Done.

Note:
1. The custom slideshow xml file is saved in the /home/username/.crebs folder.

2. An alternative is to use third-party wallpaper changing app, like Drape, Wallch etc.

Wallch is a pretty new wallpaper changer app for Gnome. It has just released version 1.0 of its software days ago. Just like any other wallpaper changing app, it allows you to define a set of wallpapers to be rotated at certain interval.

Installing Wallch

There is no PPA for Wallch yet, so the next best option is to install via the deb file (unless you love compiling from source). Go to its SourceForge page and download the deb file (do not download the tar.gz file).

Double click the deb file to install.

Usage

Go to “Applications -> Accessories -> Wallch Walpaper Changer” to launch the app. The usage is simple. Add your wallpapers to the box, set the interval to change the wallpaper and press “Start” to run the program. That’s it.

One thing that you have to take note is that once you “start” the program, you won’t be able to change the configuration (add/remove wallpapers, changing interval etc) anymore. You will have to “Stop” the application to make changes to the configuration.

One feature about Wallch is that it allows you to create your own wallpaper, either from the webcam or take a screenshot of your current wallpaper.

Live Earth wallpaper

The most interesting thing about Wallch is the ability to set Live Earth images as the desktop wallpaper. Go to “Edit -> Preferences -> Live Earth Wallpaper. Press the “Activate Live Earth Wallpaper” button.

There is no detail instruction here, but the Live Earth Wallpaper module can’t work concurrently with the main wallpaper changing module. If you have “Started” the wallpaper changing module, you won’t be able to activate the Live Earth Wallpaper. In addition, the changing interval is set to 1/2 hours which you can’t change.

Other configurations

Creating a wallch album

Wallch allows you to create a photo album with your wallpapers. You can create multiple albums. Depending on your mood, you can then get it to load the wallpapers from your favorite album.

Notification sound and bubble

I find this to be very annoying, so I switched both (the sound and the notification bubble) off instantly.

History

Wallch keeps a history of the time the wallpaper is changed and the changed wallpapers. You can access the history file at the .config/WallpaperChanger/History folder. Seriously, I don’t see any use for logging the changes. Will you be interested to find out at which time of the day which wallpaper was set on your desktop?

Bonus – Download 1000 cool HD desktop wallpapers

To encourage its users to use the app, the developers of Wallch are giving out 1000 desktop wallpapers (400+ mb) for free. I have downloaded it and I must admit that the collection is pretty cool.

Download the wallpapers here

Things that Wallch are lacking

Being a long time wallpaper changer app user, here are some things that I found lacking in Wallch.

1. Unable to select multiple folders when adding images – You won’t be able to add images in multiple folders at the same time. For example, I have a main “Wallpaper” folder with several sub folders containing my wallpapers. I would love to have the option to select the “Wallpaper” folder and add all my wallpapers inside the folder and subfolders. (update: Fixed by developer)

2. Unable to watch a folder for new wallpaper – It would be great if it can watch my Wallpaper folder and add new addition to the library.

3. Switching the close button should minimize to tray, not exiting. (update: Fixed by developer)

4. The tray icon should provide a one-click access to change the current wallpaper. (update: Fixed by developer)

Wrapping up

Wallch is still new, so there are still plenty of feature that it is lacking. The ability to display Live Earth wallpaper is cool though. For the time being, the trustworthy Desktop Drapes still remains my favorite wallpaper changer app.

Wallch

Cortina is a simple wallpaper changer for the Gnome desktop. It does not come with any fanciful features that other wallpaper changing app don’t have, except that it is pretty lightweight and perform all its task quickly and swiftly.

Installing Cortina

In Ubuntu Karmic/Lucid/Maverick, you can install via the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cs-sniffer/cortina
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cortina

For other distros or other versions of Ubuntu, you can download the deb, or tar file in the download page.

Handling Cortina

The first time you run Cortina (Applications -> Graphics -> Cortina), it will prompt you to select the folder where you contain all your wallpapers.

Once you have selected your wallpaper folder, you will see an icon appearing at the system tray.

Right click at the Cortina icon to bring up the option page. You will see two tabs: Display and Preferences.

The Display tab is where you can see your collection of wallpapers waiting to be rotated in the desktop.

The Preferences is where you can configure the wallpaper and application settings.

You can configure Cortina to Auto start when login and to switch wallpaper on start. There is also the lapsed time before every switching of wallpapers. Lastly, there is also the wallpaper search directories where you can add/remove folders of wallpaper images.

At the bottom of the preferences pane lies two confusing buttons: Tray and Close. Most people will tend to think that the Close button is to exit the Options page, not quitting the application. This is the confusing part: the Close button actually closes the Option page as well as quitting the app. If you just want to close the Options page (without quitting the app), you will have to press the Tray button.

Seriously, I don’t see the need to have both the Tray and Close button. It’s kinda confusing and misleading. (To the developers) Having the Close button to close the Option page will do.

Update: The latest version of Cortina has fixed this issue. There is only one Close button now instead of two confusing buttons. Thanks to Eric for listening.

Conclusion

Cortina is not a very impressive wallpaper changer. Nor does it comes with any killer features that make it a must-have app. However, if you are looking for a lightweight application that can get the work done with speed and no hiccup, then Cortina is a good one.

In this article, we are going to do some thing more interesting – change the bootsplash and login screen concurrently when you change your desktop wallpaper.

Note: this is currently only possible with Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 or distro with xsplash installed.

Installation

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:meerkat/stable
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install xsplash-background-settings

First, install the dependencies.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Download the wallpaper_daemon.py script from Gnome-Look.org.

Extract the tar file to a suitable location, probably your home folder.

Go to the location where you have extracted the file. Right click on the wallpaper_daemon.py and select Properties. Go to the Permissions tab and check the box “Allow executing file as program”. Click Close.

Open a terminal and type

/filepath-to-script/wallpaper-daemon.py –-install

Remember to change the filepath-to-script to the actual filepath.

This will backup your existing xsplash screen and run the daemon.

Now change your desktop wallpaper (System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Background)

Open a new terminal (do not close the previous one) and type:

sudo xsplash

You should see a preview of your new bootsplash. Press “ESC” to return to the desktop.

Go to Startup Application (System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications)

Click Add

Enter the command as below:
Name: Wallpaper Daemon
Command: /filepath-to-script/wallpaper_daemon.py

Remember to change the filepath-to-script to the actual filepath

Click Close.

Close all windows and restart your computer. You should now see your favorite desktop wallpaper as the bootsplash and login screen.

Screenshots

Desktop wallpaper

Bootsplash screen

Login screen

Wallpaper Changer

If you are using wallpaper changer app like Wally or Desktop Drape, they will work with the wallpaper_daemon script as well. Whenever the desktop wallpaper changes, the xsplash and login screen will change as well.

Uninstall

If you feel that the wallpaper_daemon script is taking up too much resources, or you are tired of such fancy stuff, here are the steps to uninstall it.

Go to Startup Application, delete the wallpaper_daemon entry that you have entered earlier.

Open up your Nautilus file manager and navigate to /usr/share/images/xsplash and look for this file backup.xxxxxxx where the xxx represents a string of number. Copy down the name of this file.

Open up a terminal,

sudo tar -C / -xf /usr/share/images/xsplash/backup.xxxxx

Note: Replace the backup.xxxx with the actual name of the backup file.

This will restore the default xsplash screen.

That’s it. You may also want to delete the wallpaper_daemon.py script from your computer, but that is purely optional.

How Wally Works

Download Wally for your OS and install the application. The software is compatible in all Windows versions, Linux and Mac as well. Once installed, right click the system tray icon, go to settings and start adding the folders which contains your wallpapers or pictures.

Adding local picture folders

Once you add the folders containing your pictures and wallpapers, Wally will automatically scan those folders and set an image as desktop background. You can adjust the position of the wallpaper as centered, scaled, autofit etc. The time of rotation can be set to as low as 2 minutes. Here is how the settings panel look

You can set Wally to automatically start up when your system boots. The time interval of rotating wallpapers can be adjusted in seconds, minutes and hours. Just put a custom time interval in the interval dropdown.

Adding random images

If you have a large collection of photos stored in your computer and do not want to use that folder for wallpaper setting, you can consider adding some selected images in Wally. following are the steps involved to add some selected files in Wally and rotate them after a timed interval

1. Open Wally Settings and go to “Files” from the left pane.

2. Select the images that you want to keep in the Wally settings. You can totate through only these images whenever you switch the “next photo” button from system tray.

Rotate wallpapers manually

If you don’t want to rotate wallpapers automatically, just select a long time interval from the Interval dropdown (e.g 900 hours). To rotate wallpapers on your own, right click the system tray icon and select next photo. Wally will pick a random photo from your picture folders that you have already added and set it as desktop background.

Rotate wallpapers in your desktop from different sources

This is what makes Wally very interesting to use. Wally supports 10 popular image search engines and you can set a wallpaper based on your custom searches, tags etc.

To be more clear, you can set the photos of a particular Flickr tag as desktop background and rotate them after a definite time interval. Following are the steps involved to rotate wallpapers of a Flickr tag:

1. Open Wally, go to settings and activate the Flickr module.

2. Click the Flickr icon from the left pane and add the tags of your choice. You can add multiple tags as well as full text searches.

3. Next, Choose the size of pictures you want to filter and set the order of rotation. Click ok when you are done.

That’s it. Wally will search the sources and tags that you have provided, pick up any random picture and set it as desktop background. If you like a definite image and want to save that image in your computer, just click the system tray icon and select “Save photo”.

Similarly you can use other photo sites like Photobucket, Picasa, Smugmug, Yahoo, Panoramio, Buzznet etc.

On an ending note, Wally is just brilliant and way more customizable than other wallpaper changers like Webshots, Picasa etc. It’s lightweight and compatible with all platforms. What tools or software do you use to change wallpapers automatically? Do let us know whether you found Wally interesting or not.

Nitrogen is a simple, lightweight application that allows you to change the background of your desktop. Some of its key features include support for Multihead and Xinerama, a recall mode that can remember the last wallpaper set and command line mode for script use.

If you are using Ubuntu 8.10 (with Openbox) or any other debian-based system, here is how you install and configure Nitrogen.

In your terminal,

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

add this two lines to the end of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/k-belding/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/k-belding/ubuntu intrepid main

Press Ctrl + O to save the file and Ctrl + X to close the file.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nitrogen

This should install Nitrogen on your system

Setting background wallpaper

Assume that your wallpaper folder is at /home/username/wallpaper.

In the terminal, type

nitrogen ~/wallpaper

A window will pop up showing all the wallpaper in the folder. Pick the one that you want to set as background image and click Apply.

That’s it

To get it to autostart everytime you log in, in your terminal,

nano ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh

Paste this into the end of the file

nitrogen --restore &

If the autostart.sh file does not exist, you will have to manually create one before you can carry out the above step.

Desktop Drapes is a simple wallpaper manager application for the GNOME desktop. It can automatically pick up any new wallpapers you have added to a directory and randomly change your wallpaper at regular interval, or whenever you fell like it.

Installation

Installing Desktop Drapes in Ubuntu is easy. Go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager. Search for ‘drapes‘. Check the box beside it and click Apply.

Once installed, you can start Desktop Drapes via System->Preferences->Desktop Drapes. There won’t be any popup window or configuration menu. Instead you will find a new icon on the right of the top panel. Simply click on it to change your current wallpaper.

Configuration

To configure Desktop Drapes, right-click on the icon and select Preferences. You won’t see a window with many options. On the main screen, you will see your current wallpaper. To add extra wallpapers from other folders, click “Add”.

On the General tab, you can choose whether you want Desktop Drapes to start and switch wallpaper when login. You can also set the timing to auto switch the wallpaper at regular interval.

Generally, this is a simple wallpaper changer that performs what it suppose to do: change wallpaper at regular interval. If you just want a simple set-and-leave-it wallpaper changer, then this would be the right choice. However if you want more functionality such as auto-download photos from Flickr, I would recommend Webilder.

Webilder does just that. It allows you to download images from Flickr and Webshots and set it as your wallpaper. You can customize it by setting the keywords (or tags) to watch for and/or check out the Webilder channel for tags and albums shared by others.

Installing Webilder (on Ubuntu Hardy Heron)

In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Insert the following codes to the repository: (yes, the code is for Feisty, but it works in Hardy too)

deb http://debian.websterwood.com/ feisty main
deb-src http://debian.websterwood.com/ feisty main

Save and exit.

In the terminal again,

sudo apt-get update

For GNOME,

sudo apt-get install webilder webilder-gnome

For KDE,

sudo apt-get install webilder webilder-kde

Once installed, right click on the top-right panel and select “Add to Panel“. Scroll down the list to find “Webilder Desktop Applet“. Click “Add” follow by “Close“. You will now see the Webilder icon on the panel.

Click on the Webilder icon to open the configuration manager.

Go to Tools->Preferences to customize your setting.

The General tab allows you to determine the frequency to rotate your wallpaper and to download new photos.

The Flickr tab allows you to add custom tags to define the type of photos you want to download.

Some syntax you can use:

party, beach : download photos that are tagged with both party and beach
party, beach;swimsuit : download photos that are tagged with both party and beach, or with swimsuit

Other things that you can customize include the photos from specific flickr user and album.

The Webshots tab allows you to configure download from Webshots. You will need to enter your login account to activate it.

The Advanced tab determines the path where the photos are downloaded to.

Once you are done with the configuration, click Tools->Download Photos to begin the downloading. After the downloading is completed, you should see all the photos on the main window. Filter out those that you don’t want (right-click and select Delete Forever). It should now change your wallpaper regularly at the interval that you have specified previously.

GNOME desktop does not come with a wallpaper changer. While there has been lots of wallpaper changing script developed by enthusiasts, none of them provide an easy to use graphical interface. Most of them will require you to run the code in your terminal.

Wallpapoz is different…

It provides a simple interface where you can add/manage/preview wallpaper (or the whole wallpaper folder) easily. You can set the time (in minute) for the wallpaper to change and whether to change in an ordered list or in random order.

One of the features that I like most is its ability to change wallpaper when you switch workspace. Did I mention that it also works well with Compiz? :)

Installing Wallpapoz

Download the source code from http://wallpapoz.akbarhome.com/download.html

Retrieve the required dependencies (for Ubuntu Gutsy):

sudo apt-get install python-gnome2 python-imaging python-gtk2

Unzip the Wallpapoz file:

tar -xzf wallpapoz-0.4.tar.gz

Installing the Wallpapoz

cd wallpapoz-0.4
sudo python setup.py install

Upon successful installation, you should see

Configuring Wallpapoz

Open Wallpapoz via Applications->Accessories->Wallpapoz

Click “Add Files” to add a single wallpaper or “Add Directory” to add the whole wallpaper folder.

Click on the “Preferences” button

Change the time (in minute) to your liking. Check the “Change desktop wallpaper…” box if you want to change wallpaper when you switch workspace. If you have 4 desktop spaces, you should see the following:

where the 1, 2, 3, 4 on the left hand side refer to the workspace number. You can choose to add different wallpapers for different workspace.

Once you have finished your configuration, click “Restart” to run the Daemon.

To configure the Wallpapoz Daemon to run every time you boot up your PC, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions.
Click Add. Enter the following:

Name: Wallpapoz
Command: /usr/local/bin/daemon_wallpapoz

Click OK.

Done!