PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT LIABLE TO ANY DAMAGES THIS GUIDE MAY CAUSE.
This guide will show you how to set compiz and xwinwrap to draw your background (no script required for xwinwrap!). The advantages of Compiz is that you can use a different background on each desktop, and you won't have problems with conky or other apps, as Nautilus isn't drawing the desktop. The disadvantage of Compiz is that you won't be able to use your desktop like in Nautilus (as a folder), and the background drawing capabilities are very basic (it will shrink/grow a background to the size of the screen you are using). xwinwrap will allow you to draw movies as a background, and will supposedly (I haven't tried it!) run the quake3 demo as a background.
**NOTE! This gets rid of your desktop icons. At the moment, there is no way to get both. There could be a way if the compiz fusion patch for nautilus was updated to the 2.24 (or upcoming 2.26) version of nautilus, and adapted for XWinWrap. I am not much of a programmer, though, so this is beyond my knowledge. Could make an interesting project if you wanted to try it though.
Getting Started
To get started, you first have to stop nautilus from drawing the background. To do this, use Alt-F2 to go into a terminal and type gconf-editor, then go to /apps/nautilus/preferences, find the entry titled show_desktop, and disable it to "false". You can also use this in a terminal to do the same thing:
Now, you are ready to run whatever window manager you want on your desktop. If compiz is started, we can go on to the next step.Code:gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false
Setting the background in Compiz
To set the background, you will need CompizConfig Settings Manager. To install it, go into Synaptic, and search for compizconfig-settings-manager. After you install it, you should have a new entry in your preferences menu called Advanced Desktop Effects, as well as a new entry in Appearance > Visual Effects called "Custom" (if you are on Gutsy). Open up Advanced Desktop Effects, and find an entry called "Desktop Cube" (it should be near the top). Click on it, and then click on the Appearance tab. You should see a section called "Background Images", click the add button to add a background for each desktop. If you want to use a background on more than one desktop, you add it for each desktop you want it on. The order of the backgrounds is the order pf how it will be placed on the desktops. For example, if I have 4 desktops, the first background will be for the first desktop, the second background will be for the second desktop, etc. Add each background until all desktops have a background. Congrats, you are done!
Setting the background using Xwinwrap:
You can get xwinwrap from Trevino's repo here or click this link to download the package from the repo for Feisty (also works with Gutsy). 64 bit users can get an ISO from this post. Simply double click it in your favorite file manager and it will install. This howto will focus on the command line, but a GUI was written was written for it and is available here. To start, open up a terminal and type this in to start a screensaver playing as your desktop background (you must have xscreensaver installed, or this will not work; it is available in the ubuntu repositories):
To start a movie as your desktop background (you must have mplayer installed to use this; it is available in the ubuntu repositories):Code:xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -a -nf -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -window-id WID
To start the quake3 demo on the desktop (I have not tried this!), use:Code:xwinwrap -ni -o 0.6 -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet movie.mpg
You have now used Xwinwrap on the desktop!Code:xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- q3demo -window-id WID
I hope you enjoyed my howto.
Adv Reply
Originally Posted by nikoPSK
But there is xwinwrap for videos. 
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