So one thing I miss about windows is the Active Desktop, or at least some features from active desktop. You can just drop cool animated HTML files into the active desk and it just plain works. Unfortunately, this is not as easy in linux. Enter a small program called xwinwrap. This nifty little bugger lets you run pretty much anything you can think of as a desktop background. You can even run things like the Quake 3 demo as your background, how freakin’ awesome is that. The instructions that follow I know for a fact works in Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid.
1. Copy and paste this into your terminal to satisfy the needs of xwinwrap
sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxrender-dev libxext-dev cvs
2. Now copy and paste this in order to get the xwinwrap source code
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/xapps co xwinwrap
3. Now here’s how to compile, type these both into the terminal
cd xwinwrap
and then….
make
4. This is optional but if you do this it makes the xwinwrap command easier to get to
sudo cp xwinwrap /usr/bin
Now you can do some really cool stuff with this program like play movies, games, programs, screensavers all as the desktop background
Run this junk in the terminal and witness its coolness. Check out the xwinwrap man page for all the command
xwinwrap -ni -o 0.40 -fs -s -sp -st -b -nf -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root -window-id WID
This will run the matrix screensaver as your background. Just fool around with the commands and you can run pretty much anything with this sucker.
I waited until the end to include this for you lazy bums who don’t want to compile yourself. Here is a link to a deb package that will just install it for you. I did this for your own good b/c compiling your own software is good practice.
Here’s a video to show you what the final product looks like