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#1 2006-02-10 04:06:00
- mac57
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- From: St. Somewhere
- Registered: 2006-01-06
- Posts: 302
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A Little Fun - xpenguins
I used to love xpenguins, those funny little penguins that would fall from the top of your display and wander all over the place, reading books, jackhammering your windows, skateboarding and so on. That was back when I used IceWM.
Since I moved to more advanced desktop environments which take over the root window, I have been unable to enjoy the antics of the xpenguins... until tonight. Tonight I figured out how to get them to work again at least with XFCE4 and Rox desktop - I bet this recipe will work with any window manager and desktop. I thought I would pass it along for your enjoyment.
Here is what to do:
get the XWindows ID of the background desktop by running:
xwininfo
and clicking on a blank spot of the background. This will display tons of info about that window, including its window ID. Copy that ID with the middle mouse button.
Start xpenguins per the following (paste the copied window ID in where it says x-window-id
xpenguins --id x-window-id &
Thats it! Enjoy!
Cast off the Microsoft shackles Jan 2005
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#2 2006-02-10 05:55:37
- keevn7
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- From: Lancaster, OH, US
- Registered: 2005-06-09
- Posts: 206
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Re: A Little Fun - xpenguins
The version from pacman works atop Xfce4 for me without anything silly. Perhaps it is because I am using svn though.
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#3 2006-02-10 16:56:09
- mac57
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- From: St. Somewhere
- Registered: 2006-01-06
- Posts: 302
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Re: A Little Fun - xpenguins
That may be so. I am using Rox desktop, and I had to do this fiddling around to get it to work there. I noticed that xpenguins just didn't work with KDE on other distros as well. Haven't tried KDE here on Arch, as I have focused my whole installation around light and fast alternatives to everything, in keeping with the overall Arch philosophy (and speed!) of fast and simple.
Cast off the Microsoft shackles Jan 2005
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#4 2006-02-10 17:05:11
- FoPref
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- From: Erlangen / Germany
- Registered: 2004-03-24
- Posts: 96
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Re: A Little Fun - xpenguins
Hi,
although XPenguins tries to draw on the original root window, it is not limited to that one. Like xsnow and xmms-rootvis, it uses several techniques to find out which window is the "right" root window now. This only works, if the desktop program plays nice (WM specs)... or the background pixmap setter one called, respectively.
In KDE, there is one burden, you need to set by hand:
Control Center -> Desktop -> Behaviour -> Misc Options:
[x] Programs in desktop window
Otherwise the KDE desktop wouldn't tell it's new "root" window.
Manually fetching the window id should always work though 
So long,
Ford Prefect
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