CrunchBang Linux

Bast

Member

From: France

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 39

Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

Hi all.
I actually have 2 desktop on my crunchbang and i wanted to know if it was possible to have a different wallpaper on both of them to an easy see on what desk i'm working on.
I have no clue about how to manage it on openbox.
Maybe someone already tryed that ?

Thanks per advance.

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"democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner"

ewelltb

Member

From: North Carolina, USA

Registered: 2009-04-12

Posts: 28

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

Hi.

I am absolutely no expert, but i'm afraid you won't be able to have different desktops with different wallpapers, at least not from what i see.  Changing desktops is like hitting the "show desktop" button, simply freeing space on the desktop to clear things up.  But, from what i understand, if there are particular apps you run frequently, you may be able to "stick" them to one particular desktop, or something to that effect. 

But as far as I know, shifting your wallpaper with your desktops isn't done yet.
Now, there are "rotating wallpapers" programs to shift your wallpaper like a slide show, but that's pretty much eye-candy...

again, no expert...

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"Oh, i'm sorry.  Did I break your concentration...?"

corenominal

WRONG

From: Lincoln, UK

Registered: 2008-11-20

Posts: 5,081

Website

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

This is a bit of a hack, but you could accomplish this by editing your Openbox rc.xml file and using multiple actions within two of your keybindings like so:

    <keybind key="W-F1">
      <action name="Execute">
        <startupnotify>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
          <name>ChangeWallpaper1</name>
        </startupnotify>
        <command>nitrogen --set-scaled ~/path/to/first/image.jpg</command>
      </action>
      <action name="Desktop">
        <desktop>1</desktop>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="W-F2">
      <action name="Execute">
        <startupnotify>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
          <name>ChangeWallpaper2</name>
        </startupnotify>
        <command>nitrogen --set-scaled ~/path/to/second/image.jpg</command>
      </action>
      <action name="Desktop">
        <desktop>2</desktop>
      </action>
    </keybind>

Obviously the above would only work for those keybindings and would not work when changing virtual desktops by another method such as mousebindings etc. Having said that, you mentioned you are only working with 2 desktops, so writing some sort of toggle script should not be too difficult; it could then be applied to the mousebindings too! I am a little busy at the moment working on the 9.04.01 releases, does anyone else fancy helping out with this? If not, I will try and get around to bashing something together as and when I find time.

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Ex-developer of #! CrunchBang. Follow me on Twitter

kBang

#! Die Hard

From: Calera, AL, USA

Registered: 2009-01-06

Posts: 774

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

You can with Compiz, not sure about without it.  Compiz is a compositor and window manager, there are drawbacks and benefits to using it, the key draw back is it tends to be a resource pig once you start enabling many of it's features.

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I view KDE like I view snow. It looks fun and marvelous, it's fun to play in, but after a while I just want someone to take it all away.

ewelltb

Member

From: North Carolina, USA

Registered: 2009-04-12

Posts: 28

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

Thanks guys...

I'm definitely a newbie, and the advice was great...

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"Oh, i'm sorry.  Did I break your concentration...?"

funky_uncle

#! Member

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 86

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

It would be completely awesome to have two different desktops without having two separate user accounts! I love the minimalistic style, my wife likes it to be pretty. And we could have one set of shortcuts/launchers each. When I get big, I'm going to make a distro just like that.

jackbang

#! CrunchBanger

Registered: 2009-05-28

Posts: 244

Re: Having differents wallpapers on each desktops

having different icons on each desktop would be nice, if you use icons.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I think desktop icons are usually implemented as windows, so it should be possible, even easy, to code this - yet I don't know of any file manager that does it.