Asking because I only recently realized that I’ve been running KDE default wallpapers for over a year without noticing. I’m also debating whether to switch to something more “fun” and aligned to my hobbies
As far as I’m aware, popular OSes/DEs tend to have a healthy selection of high-quality default wallpapers, and some OSes/DEs even have wallpaper “shops”. So I’d like to ask what you all use! If you are using a custom one, love to hear where/why you got it.
If you want to share your custom wallpaper feel free to
Edit: thank you all! I didn’t realize how many of you use solid colors… as well as the number of people who don’t think too much about wallpapers since you don’t look at it often (frankly the same for me). For the ones who shared: thanks a ton. Also fun story: there was a recurring joke on r/Unixporn about anime wallpapers but I guess it is not remotely as popular outside of the ricing community
Poorly cropped (by me) manga screencaps mostly. Some silly pictures and landscapes here and there too
Custom wall papers always for personal machines.
I use to have a monotone black wallpaper because I had weird game glitches when I had a wallpaper, but I don’t play that game anymore so now I have one of the moon.
Solid color: Light-ish dull-ish green. Been using it since I concluded that I didn’t like the Win98 default, and it has carried over to other OSes after that.
Roughly #81e39b
$ convert -size 200x200 "xc:#81e39b" example.png
Yeah, pretty close. I don’t have my PC available so I don’t know exactly, I just picked those values from a color picker website.
Dull grey for me. Exciting, I know.
I have a hyprland „rice“ config (didn’t do it myself) which came with beautiful backgrounds ootb but I don’t really use it at all. The one i mostly use is close to stock sway with the default sway-bg background.
Almost-black solid color wallpaper, made it myself (IIRC I just screenshotted from some tool that displays colors after you enter a six digit hex value). It looks neat.
Why use a screenshot of a color and not set the wallpaper to said solid color?
At one point I was working on a tool to programmatically change the desktop theme, and this way I didn’t have to account for different methods of wallpaper setting.
Custom, but I understand the appeal of sticking with the default.
I think the issue with wallpapers is that there’s a very fine balance that it needs to strike: not too simple that it’s monotonous, but not too fancy that it’s distracting and hides icons. Too many wallpapers swing too significantly in either extreme that I simply don’t like the vast majority of wallpapers that I find.
Interestingly, KDE seems to strike this balance relatively consistently - they must be aware and are actively attempting to strike that balance. I don’t know how else to explain it.
This was always my primary concern when I still used wallpapers that weren’t solid color! So hard to find a good one like that.
I don’t spend much time looking at my wallpaper these days, though.
Default, I love scarlet tree
I always use images from the JWST:
https://esawebb.org/images/?sort=-release_date
They’re all gorgeous.
For my phone backgrounds, I use pictures made by Seok98.
GiTS/Jujutsu Kaisen anime girls.
*I’m so surprised how many people use solid colours. Interesting to see other peoples apparent mindset in that regard.
Slide show with slow changes, only every 6 hours. It shows a selection of my own photos of beautiful nature, according to the current season.
At work, all black, because I prefer working in a darkened room and sometimes I need to use the laptop in sunny conditions full of glare. I have no need of any extra light getting blasted at me not directly related to something I’m working on. Also, I get a kick out of the “Why are your other monitors off?” comments. Also, IT tends to clutter my desktop with a bunch of shortcuts with a hodgepodge of icon styles, it’s a lot easier to visually parse these on a black field.
At home, the media server is directly connected to a TV with HDMI and has a desktop environment. My distributions default wallpapers always come in two varieties, colorful or greyscale. The server automatically logs into a restricted user account for family access to Kodi, retro arch, web browsing, etc., which has the colorful wallpaper. If for some reason I need to get into the admin account with a GUI, the desktop wallpaper is grey. It’s like an always-on simplified color coded whoami. Since I almost never interact with this machine except through ssh or the services it hosts, this is the most amount of ricing I’m willing to do.
At work, all black
Not sure that this requires an example, but since I’m doing example images for some other comments, for consistency:
$ convert -size 200x200 "xc:black" example.png
Ok, but I can also just choose the color directly and not set an image as a wallpaper. I appreciate your effort, but what is the advantage here to tiling a PNG?
I’m not suggesting you use it. I’m putting visible color swatches for people to see in the thread. Black’s pretty straightforward, of course.
I’m not complaining, just thought you knew something that I didn’t. That’s why I asked.
Sure, gotcha. Nah, just showing an example.
Lol that’s the exact same as voyagers background colour in dark mode.
I almost thought the link was broken.
The next question will be everyone’s Threadiverse client background color.
I have never really used wallpapers. I have always used an all black screen.
Now screen savers/locked screen images, I have numerous pictures I use of Star Wars things, mmy vacation photos etc.
Solid black to save my OLED screen from burn in.
Anyone know if there’s something easy to use like Wallpaper Engine for Linux? Specifically on Bazzite
That hasn’t worked on my desktop in the past, except to crash KDE unfortunately.
I can try again though I guess…
Try this: https://github.com/y4my4my4m/kde-shader-wallpaper
You can get it directly through KDE: Desktop Settings -> “Get New Plugins…” button.
It’s more limited since it’s only shaders, but there’s a lot of shaders out there.
This is bundled into the plugin for example. You can use their shadertoy link for a proper preview, but you need a browser with WebGL enabled:
https://godotshaders.com/shader/balatro-background-shader/
There’s 100 built in and you can add new ones, but it’s not painless for now:
https://github.com/y4my4my4m/kde-shader-wallpaper/blob/master/README_DEV.md
Custom. I have a folder of wallpapers I’ve been accumulating over the past thirty years, since I got my first laptop (brick of a thing, too) on my way to college. There are photos, parks from comics, MS Paint drawings, diagrams, even screenshots of previous desktop setups.
Setting your wallpaper to an old desktop screenshot is painful in a nostalgic and philosophical way. I did it once and cried for hours.
