Jun 302012
Warning: This page details a shell script that I’ve produced for my own amusement; it isn’t a product. It hasn’t been tested in lots of environments, and it will take some hacking to get it to work for you. If you’re looking for something to use, move along; if you’re looking for ideas to improve a real wallpaper setting program, you might want to read on.
So elsewhere I’ve admitted to driving a stake through the heart of GNOME’s wallpaper plugin to allow my own wallpaper script to work. Well, I could hardly do that and not announce it could I? So here goes :-
- It doesn’t actually set the wallpaper; it lets hsetroot do that.
- It requires a parameter to determine which directory to choose – i.e. ~/lib/backgrounds/one, ~/lib/backgrounds/two, etc.
- It uses xrandr to pick out the “regions” of the default screen.
- It puts portrait images on my portrait monitor, and landscape images on my landscape monitor by overlaying them onto an overall image the size of both monitors added together.
- It waits a set duration, and then repeats.
If you’re still interested in getting a copy it’s available at http://zonky.org/src/set-random-background.