13 Jan 2005

Variety is the spice of life, so they say. Staring at the same desktop all day long isn't as fun as it could be. What many people find a little more interesting is a new wallpaper every half hour. Let's take a look at how easy this is to do in KDE on a SUSE or Novell Linux Desktop machine.

First, we will want a repository of interesting images. Fortunately for us, KDE comes with a handful of great images already. Personally, it's relaxing for me to spend a few minutes waking up in the morning out on an art website, handpicking my own wallpapers. Each day I grab a few more, gradually adding to the supply. A favorite site with thousands of high-quality images is deviantART. There are countless other resources available that provide wide selections of wallpapers.

Whether you have gathered your own images, or wish to use the KDE defaults, let's set up the wallpapers to rotate through them.

• Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select CONFIGURE DESKTOP. This will bring up a window:

• In the BACKGROUND box, select the SLIDE SHOW radio button.
  
• Click on the SETUP button to configure the slideshow. This opens up another window:
  

• At the top of this box, there is a place to specify how long to wait between each picture before displaying the next one. Also, there is an option to rotate the pictures randomly. Set these preferences as you would like.
  
• Next, let's specify the location of our images. Click ADD.
  

• Browse to the directory containing the images you wish to use. If this is the KDE default images, stay in this directory.
  
• Select all of the images you want to have displayed on the desktop:
  
  
  
• Click OK.
  

The application then loads all of the filenames of the images into the dialog box:

• When you are satisfied with the settings, click OK to return.
  
• In the remaining window, click OK.

Sometimes it's favorable to add some variation to your life. A new wallpaper every few minutes keeps things new and fresh and exciting. And why not? It is quick and easy to set up.