https://github.com/glouw/paperview

A high performance X11 animated wallpaper setter
https://github.com/glouw/paperview

animated desktop linux sdl2 wallpaper x11

Last synced: 6 days ago
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A high performance X11 animated wallpaper setter

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/glouw/paperview
• Owner: glouw
• License: mit
• Created: 2020-07-31T06:41:50.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2023-03-05T06:23:27.000Z (almost 2 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-12-29T16:04:45.302Z (13 days ago)
• Topics: animated, desktop, linux, sdl2, wallpaper, x11
• Language: C
• Homepage: https://glouw.com/2020/08/02/Paperview.html
• Size: 262 KB
• Stars: 1,458
• Watchers: 17
• Forks: 45
• Open Issues: 19
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

Awesome Lists containing this project

• awesome - glouw/paperview - A high performance X11 animated wallpaper setter (C)

README

        
# PAPERVIEW

Paperview is a high performance animated desktop background setter for Linux and X11.

![](screenshot.png)

Video of the above screenshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZTiA885bWM

## Build

    make # NOTE: SDL2 is required

## Single Monitor Use

    ./paperview FOLDER SPEED

A lower SPEED number will result in a faster frame rate. Only BMP files are supported.

## Multi Monitor Use

Paperview supports any number of monitors with its dynamic parameter list:

    ./paperview FOLDER SPEED X Y W H FOLDER SPEED X Y W H # ... And so on

The values X, Y, W (width), H (height) are integers and represent a rectangle with pixel

dimensions specifying where the wallpaper animation will be placed.

For instance, with a 1366x768 monitor on the left and a 1920x1080 monitor on the right,

the following command will animate the left monitor with a cat animation,

and the right, a river animation:

    ./paperview \

        ~/scenes/cat   5    0   0 1366  768 \

        ~/scenes/river 5 1366   0 1928 1080

## Running Background Daemon

Append an (&) to a paperview command to have it run as a background process. Eg:

    ./paperview FOLDER SPEED &

To stop this backgroud process, use `killall`:

    killall paperview

## Creating Custom Scenes

Creating a custom BMP scene folder from a GIF requires imagemagick.

For example, to create a castle scene folder from a castle.gif:

    mkdir castle

    mv castle.gif castle

    cd castle

    convert -coalesce castle.gif out.bmp

    rm castle.gif

## Random Animated Wallpapers at Startup

Assuming a scenes folder containing a number of scene folders is present in the home folder,

run the following snippet as a background process within .xinitrc before running `startx`,

or simply execute it after X11 is running:

    while true

    do

        scene=$(ls -d ~/scenes/*/ | shuf -n 1)

        timeout 600 paperview $scene 5 # See Multi-Monitor Use above for multiple monitor support

    done

## Performance

Running on a Thinkpad X230 from 2012 at 1920x1080 and 60fps with an integrated Intel GPU:

    intel_gpu_time ./paperview castle 5

    user: 1.904135s, sys: 0.357277s, elapsed: 100.458648s, CPU: 2.3%, GPU: 11.7%

## Known Issues

Picom, Compton (and possibly other compositors) seem to already write to the base root X11 window

which may overwrite the render done by paperview.

## Alternatives

Alternatively, if SDL2 is a problem, or if you are on Windows, two workarounds are currently available:

### Pure X11 (without SDL2)

https://gist.github.com/AlecsFerra/ef1cc008990319f3b676eb2d8aa89903

### Windows 10

https://github.com/TrAyZeN/sdl-wallpaper