Random desktop backgrounds in Openbox

May 29, 2013

If you like minimalist environments like me you may like this guide that explains how to change your desktop background every time you log in.

Before anything: If you use any window manager that provides a way to change your desktop background like nautilus does this post isn't for ya.

To handle our desktop background we will need a simple image viewer, i'm going to use feh.

If you are using Gentoo before install feh we will have to make sure that we have imlib compiled with jpeg and png support enabled. To do so, edit your package.use file:

media-libs/imlib2 X jpeg png

Save it, recomplile imlib and get feh:

emerge -av imlib2
emerge -av feh

Finnaly we need to create a startup script that will run everytime we log in; this little script changes your wallpaper from a random jpg|png image from our ~/images/wallpapers folder every 15 minutes. Tweak it!

#!/bin/sh while true; do find ~/images/wallpapers -type f \( -name '*.jpg' -o -name '*.png' \) -print0 | shuf -n1 -z | xargs -0 feh --bg-scale sleep 15m done

Cheers!