I am starting a new series of post where i will be showing-off cool desktop effects, wallpapers, etc. These are not quite useful in day to day usage, but God, i love the look on the faces of my friend when they see them. So, stay tuned to make your friends drool over your cool desktop.

This show-off is for ubuntu users and it is – Animated wallpapers. It can be achieved by Compiz Fusion and XWinWrap combo.

To get started, you first have to stop nautilus from drawing the background. To do this, use Alt-F2 to go into a terminal and type gconf-editor, then go to /apps/nautilus/preferences, find the entry titled show_desktop, and disable it to “false”. You can also use this in a terminal to do the same thing:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

After that install XWinWrap. It can be installed by this deb. Double-click on the downloaded package to open the package installer. Click install to install XWinWrap.

Now press Alt-F2 and enter the following command

xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -nf -b -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -window-id WID

And, here you go glMatrix on you screen saver.

You can try few more with the following command:

Tunnel:
xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -nf -b -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/atunnel -window-id
WID

Toasters:
xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -nf -b -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/fly9ingtoasters -window-id WID

Plasma:
xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -nf -b -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/plasma -window-id WID

Do not forget to kill the process from system -> administration -> system monitor before trying the others. To try other screen saver just replace the name of screen saver ( for example plasma with glmatrix).

P.S: Wished, i could show the video(will be working on it). Plasma can hurt your eyes. Don’t believe it then try it on your own risk .