The site is http://wall.alphacoders.com/. It is free to create an account and all you have to do is select your screen resolution to get a perfect image fit.

Simply select from the list to find a collection. For example, this is one of the Abstract selections:

You then set the resolution size for your monitor(s). This is important because the image will not fit your screen correctly otherwise. If you do not know what your screen resolution is, open the Control Panel and in the Hardware and Sound category select Devices and Printers. Find your monitor and right-click then choose Properties. This should indicate the resolution. Sometimes the resolution of a monitor is not displayed in Properties. If you do not have the user manual for the monitor or you just can’t find it, Google the monitor type (like Acer B223W) and you will find the resolution on one of the top listings. Actually, there are several different ways to find the resolution. There is no need to go into all of that here, as it is not the subject matter for this article.

Once you have determined the monitor resolution (unless you already know), click on the appropriate resolution options offered by Wallpaper Abyss. You may also enter a specific resolution not featured on the list of available options.

The monitor used in this demonstration is 1680 x 1050, so that would be the selection on the list. Click the desired resolution on the list and the image will upload. Right-click the image and choose “Save as”. Name the PNG file and save it in a folder in your Pictures library. Have some fun perusing the multitude of different images and create a collection as large as you desire.

This is pure and simple desktop fun. We all need to take a break from the technical and give ourselves a bit of leisure. There are different images on this site than there are on Desktop Nexus, which is another site worth checking out. Not only are abstract, anime and comic book images, there are more conservative images for the less geeky users.

You will find this process engrossing and fun. Blow you co-workers and friends away with a personalized background assortment that displays your character and artistic savvy.

Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 will improve that by offering to sync the primary desktop background color with the operating system’s Aero interface color.

Under Windows 7, Aero and the wallpaper color can be completely different, which may be a issue for users who like to see matching colors on their desktop.

Aero Adjuster now is a program for Windows that users can run to adjust the Aero color automatically whenever the background changes.

All you actually need to do is to download and unpack the program on your computer system. Once done you can run it with a double-click on the single executable file.

The program will modify the Aero color from that moment on to match the color of the desktop background. This is an automatic process that requires no user interaction.

Please note that the Aero color is changed permanently. Aero Adjuster will not automatically switch back to the default color if you close the application. You do however have an option to restore the old Aero color from the application’s system tray menu.

The core question with programs like Aero Adjuster is this: Do you want to run an additional program in the background for better matching Aero and wallpaper colors? The program does not use a lot of cpu cycles when it is running, but its memory usage can go as high as 15 Megabytes.

I have reviewed a similar program called Aero Blend in the past which offers a similar functionality.

Windows users can download Aero Adjuster from the developer’s Deviant Art page. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. (via)

Users can pick one of the predefined colors, enter the colors red, green and blue values or use a color chart to pick a color by selecting it.

The issue here is that it is not comfortable to experiment with different colors as the background color is not updated automatically when a new custom color is selected.

The free portable software Colortypist offers a better way of experimenting with different background colors. The main feature that it adds is realtime updates of the background color. Add to that the ability to enter color by their name, HTML code, RGB triplet or integer value and you end up with more versatile options to enter colors as well.

The program displays a simple form on startup which you can use to enter the new color that you want to use. Once you start typing you will notice that background colors change while you do that.

You can click on Copy, Save & Wallpaper to set the color as the new background color of the system. Users who want some inspiration can use the Random button to get random colors presented to them.

A right-click on the window opens a context menu with options to make the current color the new wallpaper color of the system, or to copy the color code or the color code as an image.

A right-click on the desktop closes the program automatically.

Windows users who would like to test different background colors for their system can use Colorypist to do so. The program can be downloaded directly from the developer website. The application is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

The program combines wallpaper downloading with shuffling in an easy to use interface. Yet Another Wallpaper Downloader can download wallpaper images from the following repositories: Bing, Ewallpapers, InterfaceLIFT, reWalls, Skins.be, The Randomizer and wallBase.

Here is how it works. You can start YAWD after you have unpacked the archive on your system. It is a .NET 4.0 application which means that you need to have installed the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 on your system.

Only a program icon in the Windows system tray is displayed on startup. Right-click the icon and select Open to bring up the main interface.

I suggest you start with a click on Options > Preferences for the initial program configuration. Here you define the download directory for all wallpapers, the interval in which the background images are changed as well as auto updating and autostart settings.

You can now download wallpapers from one of the wallpaper sites listed in the main interface. The Get All button downloads all available wallpapers from the site, the Update button checks for updates and downloads only those to the system. Users who want to download all wallpapers from all hosting sites need to right-click the system tray icon and select Download Wallpaper to do that. Please note that the first initial download will take a long time, even if you are on a very fast connection. You also need enough free space on your hard drive. I managed to download 2 Gigabytes of wallpaper images in less than 30 minutes on my computer, and the program was not even half-way through the download process.

YAWD create a folder for every wallpaper site on your system. Individual wallpapers can be excluded from the rotation, deleted or manually set as the system’s desktop background.

New users may also need to configure all wallpaper folders under Options > Manage Selection Folder. Here it is possible to add one or multiple folders with wallpaper images to include them in the background rotation.

I’d love to see a few feature additions in future versions. This would include the ability to add resolution limits to dismiss low resolution backgrounds and a hotkey to switch the wallpaper image more comfortably.

All in all it is a solid program that shows great promise, especially if the developer continues to work on it.

Windows users can download Yet Another Wallpaper Downloader from the project website over at Codeplex.

The free portable application Overlap Wallpaper offers one of the easiest options to add a second image to the active desktop wallpaper. The basic idea of the developer was to give users an option to add a smaller photo of their loved ones, or something that they hold dear on the monitor without affecting the active wallpaper image. The second image at the same time will display even if the primary wallpaper changes, for instance if a desktop wallpaper changer runs in the background.

Just download and unpack Overlap Wallpaper on the computer system. The program will automatically minimize itself after startup, so that only an icon remains in the system tray. Right-click the icon there and select the Settings entry from the context menu. The configuration screen opens up, which looks like this:

Click on browse to pick an image from the local computer system. This image is then added on top of the existing desktop background. You can alternatively copy and paste an image with its full path into the form directly.

The photo size sets the dimensions of the image in pixels. The image height and width will automatically be reduced if a smaller size is entered on the configuration screen. You can use -1 to use the actual image size. It is theoretically possible to display two wallpapers at once on the screen that both fit the full screen. The transparency of the overlapping image needs to be selected accordingly so that both images are shown on the screen.

The photo position fields determine the location of the photo on the screen. You may need to experiment with different values here to position it correctly on the existing desktop background. Just think of the desktop as a series of dots that equal the screen resolution, for instance 1920×1200. If you wanted to place the photo at the top right location you would select an x position value of about 1820 and an y position value of 10. If the image is larger, you may need to reduce the x position value so that it fits on the screen.

Click apply after making changes to save them. It takes some time before the changes become visible on the screen.

Overlap Wallpaper is an interesting program, handy for users who want to display a photo or image on the screen at all times. It does not have to be a photo of loved ones or something that they hold dear, it can also be an image with important textual information.

Overlap Wallpaper is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It worked fine on a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro test system. Downloads are provided at the developer’s website over at Google Code.

One fun change you can make is customizing your desktop in a pretty unique way – by changing the background image every so often automatically. While some programs exist to help you with this task, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot do it yourself with a few simple commands. Before long you can have your entire vacation album scrolling behind your open windows, changing photos every five, ten, or thirty minutes – it’s entirely up to you.

To begin, open a terminal window and open a new text file:

gksu gedit

You are going to insert a line of commands into this file, which you will later turn into a shell script. The function of each line is outlined below; you only need to copy and paste the big block of text further down. The individual explanations are so you can customize the code to fit your needs.

picsfolder=”/media/documents/photosfordesktop”

This line points to whatever folder holds the photos you want scrolling in the background. Be sure to change it to whatever folder holds yours.

cd $picsfolder

This changes the current directory to the new folder full of pictures.

files=(././.jpg)

This creates an array out of all your photos, allowing them to be mixed up for display later.

N=${#files[@]}

This simply identifies the number of pictures in the new array.

((N=RANDOM%N))

This chooses a random photo from those you made available.

randomfile=`echo ${files[$N]} | cut –characters=”1 2” –complement`

This identifies the name of the specific photo chosen.

Gconfigtool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename “$picsfolder$randomfile”

This sets the desktop with your new (temporary) photo as the background.

Now, take all those commands, put together below, and copy and paste them into the text editor you opened earlier:

picsfolder=”/media/documents/photosfordesktop”
cd $picsfolder
files=(././.jpg)
N=${#files[@]}
((N=RANDOM%N))
randomfile=`echo ${files[$N]} | cut –characters=”1 2” –compliment`
Gconfigtool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename “$picsfolder$randomfile”

Save your text document as /bin/timedwallpaper.sh and exit the text editor. Everything is ready – now you just need to tell your computer to do it. For this next part your distribution needs to have “cron” installed, a program which typically comes pre-packaged. To make sure you have it, type

sudo apt-get install cron

Once you have ensured it is installed, type

crontab -e

At the bottom start a new line and type

*/5 * * * * timedwallpaper.sh

This sets the time between pictures at five minutes. Change the number to whatever you see fit. Arrow down to the next blank line, and then type

@reboot timedwallpaper.sh

After that, press Control+x, then y, and finally enter. Exit the terminal and you are good to go. Not only will your script run however often you program it to, it will now reset each time you start your computer as well. Enjoy the scenery!

Dreamscene Activator changes that. It works under Vista and Windows 7, and will enable Dreamscene on all operating system editions.

The program has been out for quite some time. Up until recently a bug was giving users a hard time to read the text of icons on the desktop as it was turning the text into a blurry transparent mess that was barely readable.

A new version of Dreamscene Activator has been published by the developer over at Door2Windows recently which fixes that bug. The program itself has stayed as user friendly as before. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users need to run the application as administrators. The application displays the current Dreamscene status which can be either On or Off.

A click on the slider changes the status. Dreamscene is turned on if it has been off before. From then on it is possible to set video wallpapers. This is done with a right-click on a compatible video (wmv or mpg) and the selection of Set as DreamScene in the context menu.

Users who run the app for the first time need to restart the PC once before the video will be set as the wallpaper. Video wallpapers compatible with DreamScene can be found at DeviantArt and other Internet sites. (via)

Another popular choice are wallpaper rotators that change images regularly. These images are either taken from a local pool of images or from an online source.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator, as the name suggests, uses Flickr’s photo library as the resource.

Wallpapers are either found through the use of tags or by specifying a Flickr user. The wallpaper rotator supports multiple tags and offers to sort them by factors such as relevance or data of publication. Photos can also be selected from a particular user only.

Wallpapers are rotated every six hours by default and stretched if their resolution is smaller than the desktop resolution.

The wallpaper rotation is flexible, allowing users to design the rotation interval from mere seconds to months. Wallpapers can also be tiled or centered.

Desktop wallpapers are rotated in the selected interval. Users can use the get new wallpaper option to manually get a new wallpaper that is then used as the background image until the next image is downloaded automatically by the application.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator needs to run in the background for the wallpaper changing. An Internet connection is required as well to download the wallpapers from Flickr. It is theoretically possible to kill the application after it has changed the wallpaper as the new wallpaper will remain even after the application has been closed.

The developer should consider adding an option to exit the application after changing the wallpaper. The Windows Task Scheduler seems to be the best option for users who want to automate that process right now.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The program needs elevated rights at least on Windows 7. A download is available at the Codeplex project page. (via)

Weather Desktop Background basically does the same for the desktop wallpaper. The program changes the desktop wallpaper based on the weather condition so that users know them on a glance.

How does it work? It begins with a download of the program from the developer page. The program is portable and can be started right after it has been downloaded and unpacked on the system. It has to be noted that the program will only work on Windows 7 (and probably Windows Server 2008 R2).

It begins by selecting a location in the world that should be used for the weather background images. But the location is just the first step. Users now need to specify desktop background images for each weather condition since the default weather conditions display only a text of the condition.

This can take some time considering that the program lists 31 different weather conditions for which the user could add a unique background image. Images are added by clicking on a weather condition and selecting an image from the local system.

The program offers no options to change the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius or the wind speed from mph to km/h.

Weather Desktop Background is compatible with all versions of the Windows 7 operating system. Users can download the application from the developer’s Deviantart page. (via)

The freeware Auto Wallpaper Fetcher and Changer offers to automate the process of downloading wallpapers from the Internet as much as possible. It supports both local and remote wallpapers, and can rotate them in intervals as well.

The remote wallpaper feature for instance offers hundreds of categories with thousands of wallpapers. Categories can be selected from a pulldown menu. Popular wallpaper categories like Sunsets, Cars or Models are available as well as niche categories like religious symbols, graffiti or typography.

automatic wallpaper downloader

The section of the program that displays the thumbnails gets crowded quickly, as the program lumps thumbnails of all previously downloaded categories together, making it difficulty to find pictures of one specific category.

Wallpaper thumbnails are automatically retrieved from the hosting servers and displayed in the program interface. A click on any thumbnail image downloads the wallpaper to the local computer system. From there it is possible to set it manually as the desktop background, or by activating the wallpaper changer in the program.

The program does not offer mass downloads of wallpapers, it would have been nice if it would offer an option to download all wallpapers of a selected category at once to the PC.

Auto Wallpaper Fetcher and Changer has a lot of things going for it, it offers thousands of wallpaper images that can be previewed and downloaded with minimal effort. It has some usability issues on the other hand.

The program is available for download at Softpedia. It was tested on a PC running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. The software had to be started with administrative rights to download wallpapers.

anyPaper is a front end for the wallpapersetter command. And in this article I will show you how to install and use the handy desktop wallpaper tool anyPaper.

Features

anyPaper doesn’t boast a huge set of features. But what it does do is handy. Here is the feature set:

• Preview of selected image
• Six wallpaper modes (fullscreen, normal, tiled, adjusted, scaled and custom scale)
• Customize background color, image position, wallpapersetter and screen size
• Preview of background before setting
• no-set option for only handling images (command line)

Installation

Installation of anyPaper is quite simple. You will find this application in your distribution’s standard repositories. Because of that, all you need to do for installation is follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “anypaper” (no quotes).
3. Select anypaper for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. If you do not already have the wallpapersetter command installed, anypaper should pick this up as a dependency. You are now ready to go.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up anyPaper you will be surprised at how small the tool is. Remember, this is a front end for a fairly basic command, so it doesn’t require much. The main (and only) window has two tabs (see Figure 1). The first tab is where you configure your wallpaper. In this tab you can set the following:

File: The image you want to use as your wallpaper.

Style: Adjusted, Fullscreen, Tiled, Normal, Scaled, Custom Scaled. If you want to move an image to a specific spot on your desktop you must use Adjusted (and the image must be smaller than your actual desktop).

Background: Color to fill empty spaces.

Position x: The horizontal placement of your image.

Position y: The vertical placement of your image.

Width: Custom width.

Height: Custom height.Finally, on this tab, you can preview what your wallpaper will look like by hitting the Preview button. This only opens your wallpaper in a viewer window.

The second tab, Configuration, allows you to customize the wallpapersetter command line options. Here you can customize:

Default output file: This will be the file wallpapersetter uses as the actual wallpaper.

Command: Any command line options you want to use (see man wallpapersetter for a list of options).

Style: This is a list of four possible scaling options used in GTK from the gdk_pixbuf library.

Once you have made all the necessary adjustments click the Save As button (to save your options) and then click Apply. The Apply button will actually apply the wallpaper to your desktop.

Final thoughts

It’s not filled with tons of tools and it won’t rotate a directory full of wallpapers on your desktop. What anyPaper does, however, is place your wallpaper exactly where you want it on your desktop.  If you’re very picky about how your desktop looks, you might give anyPaper a try.

And although Desktop Drapes hasn’t been updated in some time, the application will still work on recent releases. In fact, I have it working on Ubuntu 10.04.  In this article I will show you how to install and use Desktop Drapes.

Installation

Installing Desktop Drapes is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool (such as Synaptic or Packagekit).
2. Search for “drapes” (no quotes).
3. Mark Desktop Drapes for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. You are ready to run the application.

Preparation

There is little you need to do to prepare your Desktop Drapes. Actually, the only thing you need to do is gather together a collection of wallpaper in a single directory. I place mine in ~/Pictures/Wallpaper. Once you have that ready, you can use Desktop Drapes.

Usage

Figure 1

To run Desktop Drapes you can either click <Alt>F2 to open the run dialog and issue the command drapes or you can click System > Preferences > Desktop Drapes. Either way you won’t see a new window open when you run the command. Instead you notice a small applet in your notification area (see Figure 1).  The Drapes icon is the farthest icon to the left (in Figure 1). In order to set Desktop Drapes up, right-click the icon and select Preferences from the menu.

Figure 2

When you open up the preferences window you will see two tabs (see Figure 2).  In the first tab you add files for Drapes to monitor. You can also, from this same tab, dictate how the image will be presented. You can choose from:

• Centered
• Fill Screen
• Scale
• Tiled
• Zoom

This choice will be applied to all images, so you will want to make sure all of your wallpapers will work with that option.

In the next tab you can configure the following options:

• Startup: Should Desktop Drapes start upon login and should it switch wallpaper on startup?
• Timing: What is the interval for Drapes to switch to the next selection?
• Wallpaper search directory: Where should Drapes monitor for new wallpapers?

Now, let’s say you don’t want to have Drapes manage the time in which your wallpapers are switched. If you want to manually handle this task you can switch the Timing selection to Never (drag the handle all the way to the right) and then you can just left-click the Drapes icon when you want your wallpaper to switch!

Final thoughts

If you are like me, and you like your wallpaper to switch a lot, this little gem is perfect for you. And don’t think that if you are running Drapes that you can’t also manage your backgrounds with the standard gnome-appearance-properties app. You can. But what’s the point in that if you want your wallpaper to change at will?

So, in this series I am going to introduce you to a few tools that will help you manage your desktop wallpaper on the Linux desktop. In this first article I am going to focus on a couple of aspects of GNOME wallpaper: Specifically, installing extra wallpaper and how to change your wallpaper directly from the Nautilus file browser.

Adding extra wallpaper

The stock GNOME installation comes with a few nice wallpapers. Most of them are fairly innocuous, and some can be considered artsy. But did you know you didn’t have to scour the web to add more wallpaper to your GNOME desktop? You can find more in good old Synaptic. That’s right. If you fire up Synaptic and do a search for “wallpaper” (no quotes), you will find plenty of extras to load up. For example:

• ubuntu-wallpapers-extra
• edgy-community-wallpapers
• edgy-wallpapers
• tropic-wallpapers
• gnome-backgrounds

Figure 1

You will also find wallpapers that install with specific themes as well. Once you have selected those packages for installation, click Apply to install. Now you can open up the Wallpaper manager (right click the desktop and select Change Desktop Background). Now, when you open up the background tab in the Appearances window (see Figure 1).

You will also notice a link in this tab labeled “Get more backgrounds online”. This is a great way to find new Linux-themed wallpaper. When you click that link it will open up your web browser to the http://art.gnome.org/backgrounds/ website where you can find plenty of outstanding wallpapers.

nautilus-wallpaper

There is, of course, a much easier way to set your desktop wallpaper in GNOME. Instead of having to open up the Appearance Properties window, you can install a simple Nautilus extension that will allow you to right click an image (within the Nautilus file manager) and select “Set As Wallpaper…”. To install this handy extension follow these steps:

1. Open up Synaptic.

2. Search for “wallpaper” (no quotes).

3. Find nautilus-wallpaper and mark for installation.

4. Click Apply to install.

5. Log out of GNOME.

6. Log back into GNOME.

You can now open up Nautilus and right-click any image and set it as your desktop background. You won’t be able to manipulate the image (like stretch, center, or tile), but you can set it as your background quickly.

Final thoughts

Of course there are plenty more wallpaper management tools out there. There are more tools that work with GNOME, some for KDE, and more. But no matter the tool (or desktop), you will have your Linux desktop personalized to suit your (or your company’s) needs.

Three options are provided to find wallpapers: Random, Toplist and search which is further divided into a keyword and color search.

Wallpapers are displayed as thumbnails on the screen with a filter bar on top of them. This filter toolbar is displayed on all pages. It can be used to filter wallpapers by resolution, ratio, board (general, anime and high resolution) and type (sfw, nsfw and sketchy).

The filters can therefor be used to find wallpapers for the exact resolution of the computer monitor. Available wallpaper resolutions range from 800×600 to 2560×1600 which should be sufficient for the majority of computer users.

A click on a wallpaper opens a preview image of the wallpaper. The wallpaper can be downloaded from there to the computer system (there is no option to download the wallpapers directly from the search results listing). A link to find similar wallpapers is provided on the individual wallpaper pages as well.

The sheer size of the desktop wallpaper resource ensures that every visitor should find wallpapers that fit the computer’s screen resolution and the user’s personal taste. Visit wallbase to start searching and download wallpapers right away.

But why would you want multiple desktop wallpaper? It seems like nothing more than aesthetics? To many that is true – but for some power users it can make it quite obvious what desktop is for what job. I am one of those users that prefers to work with multiple desktops. It just makes work so much more efficient. But when you’re using Compiz (and why shouldn’t you be?) Setting up multiple wallpapers isn’t as simple as adding a new wallpaper to your existing configuration.  In this tutorial you will see just how to set up Compiz to work with multiple wallpaper.

Assumptions

The first of these assumptions is that you have Compiz working and the CompizConfig Settings Manager installed.  The second assumption is that you are using the GNOME desktop environment (for this article I am using GNOME 2.28.1. The final assumption is that you have no need for desktop icons. With that out of the way, let’s get to the configurations necessary.

Compiz

The first configuration is in the CCSM tool. You will find this tool in the System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager. When you fire up that tool enter “wallpaper” in the search field. The Wallpaper settings is listing under Utility. When you see it listed click on it to open up the options.

Figure 1

As you can see (in Figure 1)  there are only two sections to configure. The first is to click the checkbox to enable the Wallpaper for Compiz. The second is to add Wallpaper(s) by clicking the New button, navigating to where you have your images saved, selecting your wallpaper, select your Fill Type (do you want the image centered, scaled, etc), and click Close.

When you have that done you can close out CCSM. If you check you will still see only one wallpaper. What gives? You’re not done. Now it’s time to fire up another tool – gconf-editor.

Gconf-editor

Figure 2

Hit <Alt>F2 and type gconf-editor to open up this tool. You need to navigate to Apps > Nautilus > Preferences (see Figure 2) . Scroll down until you see the show_desktop entry. If that checkbox is checked, uncheck it and close the tool.

Figure 3

Now check your desktop. How many wallpapers do you see? As many as you added in CCSM? That should be the case. Hopefully you can see (in Figure 3) the two different wallpapers I have added to my desktop.  Of course I also have a few other features enabled in Compiz, but you get the idea.

Don’t forget to remember how many workspaces you have enabled. Although you don’t have to add as many wallpapers as you have workspaces, you don’t want to add more wallpapers than you have workspaces.

Final thoughts

I hope you can see how this little addition can make work a little easier. Create a specific wallpaper for administrative work, put it on a specific workspace, and only do your admin work there. It’s subtle, but effective.

The xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser is a lightweight software program for the Windows operating system which can be used to grab a random comic from the xkdc website. The comic is displayed in the interface of the portable software program where it can be viewed and set as the wallpaper of the computer system.

All downloaded comics are stored in a local cache so that they are not downloaded again should they be selected by the random comic chooser again at a later time. It is possible to exclude comics from bein displayed as wallpapers by adding them to the exclude list.

The program supports two command line parameters which can be used to automate the process of setting a new wallpaper. The parameter -random will change the wallpaper without displaying the graphical user interface while -silent will ignore any popup windows that might appear (e.g. an error if there is no Internet connection). These parameters combined with a shortcut can be added to the autostart folder or task scheduler to change the wallpaper regularly and automatically.

The program and its source code are available at the developer’s website.

The software comes only with a few options which makes it very easy to use. Colors are displayed on each corner of the interface which determine how the gradients will look like. A click on a color will open the Windows color picker. Changes become visible immediately. The gradient can be set as the wallpaper of the computer system after all four colors have been set to the user’s satisfaction.

A randomize button is also available which will change the colors to random colors. Wallpaper Generator is an easy to use program that could be useful to users who prefer distraction free backgrounds with more than one solid color.

Wallpaper Generator is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system (tested on Windows XP SP3). It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 SP1.

Some users on the other hand like it ultra-comfortable. That is where the software program ILift comes into play. It is a download manager for wallpapers on the InterfaceLift website. It needs to be configured once so that wallpapers for the right screen resolution are downloaded by the application. The right screen resolution and aspect ration can be set in the options. This is also the location to set the download path for the wallpaper images and the sort order on the InterfaceLift website.

The last step in the configuration involves selecting the number of pages that the wallpaper downloader should crawl at the InterfaceLift website. The default value is that only the frontpage is crawled by the application. This can be changed to a greater value so that some or even all pages are crawled for wallpapers.

Setting the to value to 192 would crawl all pages that are currently available at the wallpaper site. ILift should work with all versions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from Softpedia as no developer website is known at this point in time.

via Techie Buzz

Now I will preface this article by saying the developer has ceased development of Wallpapoz (he did so in 2008.) Even though it is no longer in development, Wallpapoz still works just fine. And I am sure at some point some one will pick up development of the application. But until then, Wallpapoz is a cool app that helps make your desktop even better.

Getting and installing

Most likely Wallpapoz is in your distributions’ repository, so installation is accomplished as simply as issuing a command like:

yum install wallpapoz

or

sudo apt-get install wallpapoz

There might be dependency issues which will be dictated by which release you are using. If apt-get or yum do not pick up the dependencies you might have to install them manually like so:

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

or

yum install python-gnome2 python-imaging python-gtk2

You probably won’t have to resolve those dependencies manually, but it’s nice to know how just in case.

Once Wallpapoz is installed you are ready to fire it up.

Running and configuring

To start up Wallpapoz you can click on the GNOME Applications menu and then the Accessories sub-menu. Inside of the Accessories sub-menu you will find the Wallpapoz entry. Click on that to start up the application.

Figure 1

When you start up Wallpapoz you should find the interface fairly straight forward. Figure 1 shows a very clean, user-friendly GUI that allows you to configure wallpaper for four workspaces.

The first thing you will want to do is select a workspace and then either click the Add Files button (to add single or multiple files) or click the Add Directory button (to add a directory of images.)

When you click either the Add Files or Add Directory button a Select File window will open. Navigate to the loctation of your image files and select the wallpaper(s) you want to use. You can select multiple files by clicking and holding the Ctrl key as you select the file.

After you have added the files you can then configure some options. To do this click the Preferences button. There are four options to configure:

• Change desktop wallpaper after a pre-configured time.
• Pick wallpaper in random order.
• Change desktop wallpaper when changing workspace.
• Style (Scaled, Centered, Fill Screen, Zoom, Tiled)

Once you have made your preference changes click the OK button to get rid of that window. Now click the Save button and then click the Restart button to restart the daemon (to ensure the changes take effect.)

Now your wallpaper should start changing per your configuration.

Possible gotchas

Although I haven’t found report of this happening elsewhere I have discovered that when using Compiz with Wallpapoz can cause issue with the workspaces. If you rename workspaces in Wallpapoz, when using Compiz, your Wallpapoz configuration file can be corrupted. This file is in ~/.wallpapoz/wallpapoz.xml. If this happens you can issue the command:

rm -rf ~/.wallpapoz

to delete that file and start fresh.

Final thoughts

Wallpapoz is not perfect, but it can add a nice feature to your GNOME desktop that would require some handy scripting to do otherwise. Give Wallpapoz a try. If you like it, and you’re a developer, consider forking the application (or just request permission to take over development) so this tool can continue growing.

This might however appeal to users to never wanted these features in first place and those who do not want another software program running in the background all the time. Jellybean lists the currently available wallpapers in a list in its interface. Each wallpaper can be previewed and set to either stretch, tile or center. The preview does contain additional information about size, graphics format and size of the image.

New wallpapers can easily with a file browser from the local computer. It is also possible to delete wallpapers in the table or select one for the desktop background. Checking the Shuffle Wallpaper box will add the application to the startup items so that a random wallpaper will be set at every Windows start.

It should be noted that Jellybean does not seem to recognize multi-monitor systems. Single-monitor users who only want to change the wallpaper once per run might want to give it a try.