Comments on: Xscreensaver as wallpaper

By: Alexander Schaap

Alexander Schaap — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:30:05 +0000

If you want to have a movie playing as your background (the X root window) you can use MPlayer:

mplayer -ao null -loop 0 -fs -rootwin ~/your/movie.avi

‘-ao null’ makes it mute.
‘-loop 0′ loops the movie infinitely
‘-fs’ fullscreen playback
‘-rootwin’ playback on the X root window, your desktop

Of course you have to change the path to your movie to point to a movie that actually exists. I assume the movie file formats are only limited to what MPlayer can play.

*Note: Nautilus users must make sure they prevent Nautilus from drawing the desktop. This can be done by installing the gtweakui packages and simply going into System>Preferences>gTweakUI Nautilus and unchecking ‘Use Nautilus to draw the desktop’. This will disable desktop icons/wallpaper. Other desktop environments will presumably need similar treatment.

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