Rotating Backgrounds in Fedora/Linux

If your Linux flavor uses Gnome, there are wallpapers available that change throughout the day.

Great.

But, what if you want your own?

There are applications that allow you do to this, but here's a script to do it simply.

First, put the pictures you want to use in a ~/Pictures/Backgrounds directory:

Create this script somewhere handy:
#!/bin/bash cdir=~/Pictures/Backgrounds/ destpath=${cdir} outfile=${destpath}/rotation.xml duration=3600.0 #in seconds; minutes * 60 transition=120.0 #in seconds; minutes * 60 printf "<background>\\n <starttime>\\n <year>2009</year>\\n <month>08</month>\\n <day>04</day>\\n <hour>00</hour>\\n <minute>00</minute>\\n <second>00</second>\\n </starttime>\\n<!-- This animation will start at midnight. -->\\n" > $outfile lastimage="0" #for i in $( ls -1R *.png | sort --random-sort ); do for i in $( find $cdir -iname '*.*g' | sort --random-sort ); do #cp ${cdir}${i##*/} ${destpath} image=${destpath}${i##*/} echo Processing $image if [ "${lastimage}" != "0" ] then printf " <transition type='overlay'>\\n <duration>${transition}</duration>\\n <from>${lastimage}</from>\\n <to>${image}</to>\\n </transition>\\n" >> $outfile else firstimage=$image fi printf "<static>\\n <duration>${duration}</duration>\\n <file>${image}</file>\\n </static>\\n" >> $outfile lastimage=$image echo - Finished $image done printf " <transition type='overlay'>\\n <duration>${transition}</duration>\\n <from>${lastimage}</from>\\n <to>${firstimage}</to>\\n </transition>\\n" >> $outfile echo "</background>" >> $outfile gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri file:///${outfile}

Then run it:

chmod +x ./build_background_xml3.sh
./build_background_xml3.sh

Done!