Open Source

29773 readers

522 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

304

Lively Wallpaper - Open Source alternative to Wallpaper Engine for animated wallpapers. (github.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Figured I'd share this project as I don't see many that know about it! (Only available for Windows)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

I don't understand why there is no such projects as mature on Linux. With access to plugins for the most used desktop environments you think it would actually be easier to implement. Running VLC borderless in the background is still the way many people suggest

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Maybe because we Linux users never look at our desktop? 😅Dunno but would be nice to have

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

It's probably a combination of this and technical difficulties stemming from there being seemingly 20.000 Desktop Environments/Window Managers

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have you never heard of compiz? The Linux 3D window manager with burning windows.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's a windows manager though. I was using that 20 years ago :D

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Used OS or how much you see the desktop doesn't matter. This is customization that feels good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That's so interesting to me, because as someone thinking about switching over to Linux after playing around with it a bit, one of my main motivations is the ability to customize the desktop like crazy. Personally I like the minimal modern look, but I like that you can make it anything you want.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

True that. I pretty much only see my desktop on a fresh boot.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

I honestly see my wallpaper for about 0.01% of my screentime. Having a process hogging CPU to animate something I don't see if quite useless to me.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

Try helping ScreenPlay support Linux, it's probably the closest alternative other than that kde-plasma reverse engineering port of Wallpaper Engine. You just need to compile it manually. https://screen-play.app/ https://gitlab.com/kelteseth/ScreenPlay

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I might have not understood the exact use-case, but for using gifs or videos (via mpv) as a background there's XWinwrap.

There are probably better forks with more functionality

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's probably more complicated precisely because of the multiple desktop environments and X11 set up. Windows you can make one tool to work on all desktops.

You'd probably need systems for KDE and Gnome, etc. Perhaps Wayland may make this simpler?

Ultimately I suspect it's just not a priority when the complexity is factored in. An animated desktop is pretty to look at but probably not a project getting lots of devs interested in if it's so complex to implement and maintain at present?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I haven't played with this too much, but I'm reasonably confident you only need an X11 and a Wayland implementation. Mplayer / mpv can play on "rootwin" on X11. For Wayland I think it's a layer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Doesn't KDE already have it?