Set animated GIF as desktop wallpaper?

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, all.

Just a brief query here before I head off up the 'wooden hill'. Has anybody ever had any success with setting an animated GIF image as background wallpaper in Puppy.......and, if so, would you care to share?

I was trying this earlier on tonight, but, as expected, only the first frame of the GIF sequence is displayed, so it's essentially a 'static' image. I'm sure I can't be the first to try this, but as we all know, Pup's 'desktop' ain't like other Linuxes (and has a character all of its own)!

It'll run as an animated image from /usr/share/backgrounds, if you open it in Viewnior. But trying to set it as wallpaper with JWM DeskManager appears to be a no-go. I'm suspecting this is to do with the way ROX & JWM work together.....and perhaps something to do with 'mime-types'?

Any pearls of wisdom y'all might care to dispense would, as always, be very much appreciated.

TIA.


Mike.

[Geoffrey]

Look here Mike http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=106892

[drunkjedi]

Hello Mike sir,

I ain't any "expert" but I don't think Rox pinboard can display animated GIF.

But I have an idea, explode that GIF in frames.
Then use random wallpaper changer found on this forum which changes wallpaper with set time , or use conky to display those frames and change wallpaper every second to get animation.

This is just an idea.
Hope this helps.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi Geoff/DJ.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

@ Geoff:- I'm guessing all that works better with the XFCE desktop, yes? I've used it in Pups on this old girl before, but I always eventually end up with XFCE crashing and not being able to reset itself.....so I kinda gave up on 'em. For me, it's ROX/JWM all the way now.

It looks (and sounds) complicated, anyway.....and I'm not certain it's that high a priority for me to justify putting the effort in. I was hoping there was a relatively simple way to do it; much like my signature, where I've used the GIMP to 'embed' a GIF within a JPG/PNG image.

----------------------------

@ DJ:- Interesting idea. Conky, however, has never been a favourite of mine; TBH, if it involves using it, I'd sooner forget the whole idea. I just don't have the patience with it!

Thanks for the suggestion, though.


Mike.

[fredx181]

Hi Mike,

A while back I've made a little program for that, gifondesktop (yad GUI), .deb package is here:
https://fredx181.github.io/StretchDog/i ... 0_i386.deb
For transparency you need to have gtkdesklet installed, pet package is probably easy to find, anyway here's .deb:
https://fredx181.github.io/StretchDog/i ... 1_i386.deb
Some (transparent) gifs can be found in /usr/share/gifondesktop (after install)

Have fun !

EDIT: Whoops, sorry, just see now you asked for animated gif as wallpaper.
Oh, well, maybe gifondesktop is still useful to play with.
EDIT: See also here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 184#954184
A liitle further in that thread: dancing letters. It's fun also !

Fred

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Fred.

Nah, don't dismiss the idea that quickly. I'm essentially thinking of placing an animated GIF slightly off-centre (to the left) onto a dark or black background. I don't want the whole thing animated, but just a section. Similar to what greengeek acheived here (except off-set to the left, rather than central to the screen). I want it to fit into my 'standard' desktop design, where I have my 'system and info' panel, containing gkrellm and pWidgets amongst others, on the right-hand side of the screen.

Do these here doo-hickeys of yours work with ROX & JWM.....or only a 'proper' DE?


Mike.

[fredx181]

Do these here doo-hickeys of yours work with ROX & JWM.....or only a 'proper' DE? Rolling Eyes Laughing

Yes, it does, tested on a few puppies with JWM, only small issue can be that it doesn't appear in the Menu (just tried with slacko, and it doesn't, don't know why, should appear in "Graphics"), then run gifondesktop from terminal.

What's a doo-hickey ?, hopefully you're not being unkind to me

EDIT:

Similar to what greengeek acheived here

Yes, gifondesktop can do exactly that, with setting for where to place it.

Fred

[Mike Walsh]

Ah! Excellent; sounds just like what I need, then.

What's a doo-hickey ?, hopefully you're not being unkind to me

Just a Brit 'slang' term for any gizmo/gadget/techie-type item. No insult..!

I'll do some experimenting then, as and when I get time. I'll knock up another MenuEntry if necessary; I've had to do that on more than one occasion when an entry should work (but doesn't). It's possible it might be related to your packaging everything as .debs, y'know.....

I'll post the result as & when. Cheers.


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Fred.

Your original .desktop entry was missing a coupla things.

The 'Encoding=UTF-8' line (I find this does help things show up.)

Also:-

Icon not showing (you forgot the .png at the end).
And 'Categories'; you just had 'Graphics;'. Rox prefers 'X-Graphic;' ('X-' at the beginning, and no 's' on the end).

Shows up now, and starts from the Menu in Slacko 570.....which is where I want it. I'll keep ya posted; gotta spend a while making my background up now!


Mike

[fredx181]

I'll knock up another MenuEntry if necessary; I've had to do that on more than one occasion when an entry should work (but doesn't). It's possible it might be related to your packaging everything as .debs, y'know

Probably not because of packaging as .debs, but because of different "Categories" that Debian handles different from Puppy, maybe changing to Categories=Graphic (instead of "Graphics") in the .desktop file will do. (also full path to the icon is required in Puppy, I think, not sure)

EDIT: Posted almost at the same time, I see, yes different way of handling .desktop launchers in Puppy.

Fred

[musher0]

The real question is : WHY?

There are at least a thousand sites on the Internet each offering a zillion
backdrop pictures in jpg.

Why the man is still unhappy with that kind of variety is anybody's guess.

Sorry for ruffled feathers and that sort of thing.

BFN.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, musher0.

Quite simply, old son, because I've always preferred to make every single one of my desktop backgrounds up from scratch. It's a long-standing habit, that goes back decades. Literally! And I'm not 'unhappy' with the variety available; it's just that the way I like to do things, I can truly call it my very own creation. Simple as that.

To me, my desktop is a very personal place.....

No, no ruffled feathers here. When it comes to graphics, and new ways of making up a new desktop background or something similar, I'll pursue it to the ends of the Earth (if I'm sufficiently interested, of course.) That's just me.

You happen to enjoy messing around with & re-scripting file-managers and similar applications. All credit to you. I use your 'Recently-used files' thing in a few of my Pups. It's very good.

I, on the other hand, enjoy messing around with multimedia applications....

Horses for courses, mate; each to their own. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; as a community, we help each other out. 'Nuff said.


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi again, Fred.

Couple more questions, if I may?

It all works fine, you'll be pleased to hear. Now then; how do you stop the animation, once started.....and where does the script run from, once created? /Tmp, by any chance? (I've already noticed that re-starting 'X' kills it...)

I just want to figure out a way of auto-starting it at boot. (Scratch that; I've just found it in /root. I can put it in ~/Startup. Still can't figure out how to kill it manually, though...)


Mike.

[fredx181]

Hi again, Fred.
Now then; how do you stop the animation, once started....

Mmm... yes that's maybe something I will add to the program, not sure how yet, maybe let it create a stop-script also.
Simplest is maybe to stop the script with killall ,for example, the script I have is /root/dogsrunning.gif_+630+685.sh and this stops it:

Code: Select all

killall dogsrunning.gif*

Or find the pid with ps and kill it

Code: Select all

# ps aux|grep dogsrunning
root     12249  0.0  0.1   5248  3144 tty1     S    17:59   0:00 /bin/bash /root/dogsrunning.gif_+630+685.sh
kill 12249

and where does the script run from, once created? /Tmp, by any chance?

That I don't understand, if the script is in /root and once executed it runs like any other script.

Fred

[Mike Walsh]

Hiya, Fred.

Sorry for the confusion. I wrote the bit about /tmp before I found the script in /root. I wasn't paying that much attention to the app when I was closing it down; I now know it tells you where the script has been created...

Be that as it may, here's the current state of 570's desktop. What d'you think of it so far?





RecordMyDesktop->LosslessCut (greengeek likes the 'micro-stepper' on this, and I have to agree with him; it's perfect for getting the ends of a GIF 'loop' sequence to marry up seamlessly)->EZGif.com (to turn the cut section of .ogv into a short GIF, followed by a wee bit of adjustment). Very useful site, that.

https://ezgif.com/

It's only a rough version at present, just to test it out. I have a couple more ideas floating around in the back of my noggin that just might see the light of day.....if I can coax 'em out!

One final question? Can you have more than one of these scripts running at a time? I'm quite impressed by how little demand it makes on the CPU; it's barely noticeable.


Mike.

[fredx181]

Haha, looks very nice Mike !

The dog's running is not very fluent, better when you view your desktop for real maybe ?

Can you have more than one of these scripts running at a time?

Yes, sure, just tested, two next to each other:




Fred

[bigpup]

That is a cool idea!
Really something different in a desktop!

However, that would drive me nuts with all that movement
My eyes would constantly be drawn to the moving image and not the icons, I was looking for, to click on.

But, still very cool!!!

[Mike Walsh]

Hiya, Fred.

The dog's running is not very fluent, better when you view your desktop for real maybe ?

No, it's pretty much the same, actually. The reason, I believe, is because the original was considerably faster and a lot smaller.....so it's been 'inflated' and 'slowed-down'. And of course, every additional editing step introduces additional latency.....and the original delay between frames would have been exaggerated

I'm not bothered; it's only practice, for now. And now that I know the idea works in more than just theory(!), I have several more ideas as to what I'd like to do.

(*Hmmm...*)

(Anyroad, thanks for gifondesktop. It really does work well.....and it's extremely light on resources, too.)

-----------------------------------

@ bigpup:-

You must be very easily 'distracted', that's all I can say! I remember you made much the same comment when I was trying him out as an avatar a few weeks back...

I guess I must be getting a reputation on here as a bit of an 'oddball', huh?

Anyway; glad you like it...


Mike.

[fredx181]

I guess I must be getting a reputation on here as a bit of an 'oddball', huh?

Noooo..., as a 'Wise' Puppy.... who loves to see some action... movement... ?!

Fred

[Puppyt]

my 2c - I recall in my last days of XP using a little boxed gif of a stickman banging his head perpetually against a wall - back then XP let you use an HTML page as a wallpaper image. If only rox pinboard could do something similar? Great work with the solution posted already, thanks all