An embedded screensaver is light on memory usage, but won’t play nice with Compiz Fusion.

gconftool‐2 ‐‐type bool ‐‐set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix ‐root

If you don’t like the Matrix look, you can substitute any listed screensaver instead of “glmatrix.”

For Compiz Fusion Users:

XWinWrap is not available in the Ubuntu repositories. I installed it with this DEB package from Treviño’s Ubuntu Repository.

Double‐click on the downloaded package to open the package installer. Click install to install XWinWrap. Now press Alt‐F2, or open a terminal, to enter this command: (Careful, it may be running off the page a bit.)

xwinwrap ‐ni ‐argb ‐fs ‐s ‐st ‐sp ‐nf ‐b ‐‐ /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix ‐window‐id WID

Your desktop should be taken over by glMatrix, the screensaver effect that I used in the video. Unfortunately, it is not possible to have desktop icons over the animation. After the double dash, you should be able to run any program you want to use as your background. Screensavers work well. Look in /usr/lib/xscreensaver for a ton of screensavers you can use. Here are a few of them I tried:

Tunnel:

xwinwrap ‐ni ‐argb ‐fs ‐s ‐st ‐sp ‐nf ‐b ‐‐ /usr/lib/xscreensaver/atunnel ‐window‐id WID

Toasters:

xwinwrap ‐ni ‐argb ‐fs ‐s ‐st ‐sp ‐nf ‐b ‐‐ /usr/lib/xscreensaver/flyingtoasters ‐window‐id WID

Plasma (my eyes!):

xwinwrap ‐ni ‐argb ‐fs ‐s ‐st ‐sp ‐nf ‐b ‐‐ /usr/lib/xscreensaver/plasma ‐window‐id WID

I have a Intel Core 2 Quad and an Nvidia Geforce 8600GT, some of the screensavers ran better than others but most had no noticeable impact on Compiz’s performance.

If you run into trouble, kill the screensaver application. Switch to a terminal with Ctrl‐Alt‐F1 and use killall programname, and then switch back to X with Ctrl‐Alt‐F7.

Alternative Source

Nautilus draws the desktop (including the icons) for you in Gnome by default. You have to tell it to stop doing that, so we can do the matrix animation in its place. Nautilus can be configured using gconf.

gconftool‐2 ‐‐type bool ‐‐set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Now that you have the desktop to ourselves, ask xscreensaver ‘glmatrix’ to start drawing itself in the desktop window (‘root’ window).

/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix ‐root

If you want the animation every time you log in, open “~/.config/autostart/glmatrix.desktop” in your text editor and paste the following:

[Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Encoding=UTF‐8 Name=No name Name[en_IN]=Desktop matrix Exec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix ‐root X‐GNOME‐Autostart‐enabled=true

If you are fed up with playing around and want your old desktop back, use this line in the terminal:

gconftool‐2 ‐‐type bool ‐‐set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop true && nautilus

Alternately, you can get to the fonts directory by going to System | Preferences | Font. This will bring up a Font Preferences dialog with a Details button. Click “Details…” then click the button “Go to font folder”. Now drag fonts into fonts directory.

Either of these methods will install the font(s) for your local user. You can see them in the ~/.fonts folder.

1. Installing fonts for single login use
1a. using kfontview
The easiest way to install fonts is using kfontview. Try running “kfontview” from the command line.
If you do not have kfontview installed, as root run:

# apt-get install kcontrol

This will download a few dependencies, so if you are short on disk space or simply do not want to install KDE, use the instructions in step 1b

Run “kfontview” from the command line
From the kfontview window, open the font you have downloaded.
Click on the “Install” button
NOTICE: You will probably need to resize the window to see the “Install” button which is in the lower right hand corner.
Click on the “Personal” button

1b. by hand
If ~/.fonts does not exist, create it:

$ mkdir ~/.fonts

Copy the font, from the command line, run the following:

$ cp [fontfile] ~/.fonts

From the command line, run the following:

$ fc-cache -f -v ~/.fonts

or alternatively, log out, and log back in.

2. Installing for system wide use
Make the following directory as root:

# mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts

Copy the font(s) into the newly created directory:

# cp [fonts] /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts

Run the following:

# fc-cache -f -v

3. Installing Windows Fonts (eg. Times New Roman)
Make sure you have the “universe” repository added. If not, as root, modify your /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the deb line which will look something like this:

# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe

Then update apt-get:

Run the following as root: