Friday, March 27, 2009

Setting the Background with xsetbg

This is just my 2 cents on setting the wallpaper on your X Windows desktop. There are many tools for setting the background — technically called the root window. If you use KDE or GNOME, setting up the background is automatic as it is done by the friendly GUI. However, if you are one of those people — including me — who prefer light and minimalist X-Windows environment, you'll put a command in your .xsession file to set your background.


My Lotus desktop screenshot

Here, I introduce you to a nice nifty tool called xsetbg. It belongs to a package called xloadimage. I find it attractive just because it doesn't have many dependencies. This is how I use xsetbg in my .xsession file to place my lotus wallpaper on the desktop:


/usr/bin/xsetbg -center -xzoom 115 -yzoom 128 /usr/share/pixmaps/5469_G.jpg

The nice thing about it is that it lets you zoom the width and height separately and center the image at the same time. Pratically, this feature allows you to hide unwanted edges from the screen. For example, the picture below has unnecessary edges around it.


The forgotten sanctuary in the fantasy land

The following command sets this image as the desktop wallpaper without the unwanted edges (assuming your screen is in 800x600 resolution). Change the zoom percentages as necessary for your screen resolution.


xsetbg -center -xzoom 67 -yzoom 85 Sanctuary.jpg

My Fantastic Sanctuary desktop screenshot

No comments:

Post a Comment

About This Blog

KBlog logo This blog seeks to provide a collection of interesting pictures found on the Web. Thanks for visiting the blog and posting your comments.

© Contents by KBlog

© Blogger template by Emporium Digital 2008

Followers

Total Pageviews

Powered By Blogger