How To Let Your Wallpapers Rotate With Webilder (Linux Mint 11)

Version 1.0
Author: Christian Schmalfeld <c [dot] schmalfeld [at] projektfarm [dot] de>

This article is about how to automatically change your desktop wallpaper on prespecified intervals with a software called Webilder that also downloads new wallpapers from flickr and webshots every few hours. This is also the software used for rotating wallpapers in the Ubuntu derivative Pinguy OS.

1 Preliminary Note

I have installed and tried Webilder on Linux Mint 11, however it should also work on all other Debian and Ubuntu based distributions.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

2 Install Webilder

Download Webilder from here http://www.webilder.org/static/downloads/Webilder-0.7.1.tar.gz and unpack it into any directory. I will unpack it onto /home/ctest/Desktop. After you have got the files, open a terminal and install the needed dependencies:

sudo apt-get install python-gtk2 python-glade2 python-imaging python-setuptools

sudo apt-get install python-gnome2 libglib2.0-0 python-appindicator gettext

Next, still in terminal, change into the directory where you have unpacked the files to and install them. They are in the webilder-0.7.1 folder, so in my case I enter:

cd /home/ctest/Desktop/webilder-0.7.1
sudo python setup.py install --install-data=/usr

Be sure to replace my installation path (and/or username) with yours.

3 Start And Use Webilder

If not started automatically, rightclick your desktop panel and select Add to Panel.... Browse the available applets and click on the Webilder Desktop Applet. Click on Add and the applet should appear on your desktop panel. If the applet was not available in the list of applets in the first place just restart your system and it should appear in the list. Leftclicking on the camera icon on the panel will give you the important menu points to deal with Webilder. To start with, select Preferences.

Here you can specify the intervals of rotation and download of wallpapers, which wallpapers should be downloaded and where they should be downloaded from. To add filters, head to the flickr tab, use the Add button and click on the filter fields to configure it.

To browse the wallpapers already downloaded, leftclick the icon on the desktop panel again and choose Browse Photos. They are organized in recently downloaded photos and monthly categories, however you can also add your own albums: