gDesktopChanger  gDesktopChanger v1.4 - A simple wallpaper changer for GNOME 2

Darran Kartaschew (aka Chewy509).
Released under the BSD License. 2009-2012.

A simple wallpaper changer for JDS / GNOME.

Why another Wallpaper changer for JDS / GNOME? Well most require very new versions of the GNOME desktop, or use additional libraries which tend to be overkill. (FAM comes to mind).

Requirements

Installation

Download and unpack the source code, and run the normal make and make install routine.

Downloads

gDesktopChanger Source: gDesktopChanger-1.4-i386.tar.gz

Usage

To run, use the "Add to Panel" option on JDS / GNOME Panel, and right click on the application icon (in the panel) and select properties to configure.

Once configured, left click on the application icon (in the panel) to forward 1 image.

FAQ

Q. What is JDS?
A. JDS is Java Desktop System, Sun Microsystem's rebranding of the GNOME Desktop Environment.

Q. Why yet another one of these wallpaper changers?
A. Most of the current ones availble require newer versions of GNOME that is supplied with Solaris 10.

Q. Why can't I pick and choose which images I want or select multiple folders.
A. It's only a simple utility designed to operate in the panel.
A. Move the desired files to a standalone folder, and point gDesktopChanger to that folder.

Q. I get a blank background?
A. Check the file path that is set, or ensure you enable at least one of the supported file types.

Q. My GNOME desktop supports x image format to use as a background. Why doesn't gDesktopChanger support those formats?
A. JDS as supplied by Sun only supports JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, XPM and TGA. Let me know what other formats you would like filters for, and I'll add them in.

Q. I've installed gDesktopChanger, but it's not working?
A. Exit all applications and run "bonobo-slay" from the CLI to restart CORBA.
A. Run gDesktopChanger from the CLI, and attach to the panel to get basic debugging messages, and report those accordingly. (Please include GNOME and GTK+ versions).
A. gDesktopChanger is a multi-threaded application, make sure glib and GTK are multi-threading enabled.
A. Does the folder specified exist and contain valid image files?
A. Does your build of JDS/GNOME support the file format(s) you want to show?

Q. What about a fade effect between images?
A. I tried this using 2 methods. Fade to black and then next image. (GNOME didn't honour the "picture_opacity" setting correct among different GNOME versions). And merging both images and setting that, which resulted in slamming the CPU for 1sec during image composition and GNOME often didn't keep up. (Note: newer versions of GNOME 2 have a fade transition builtin, so this is not an issue)