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
I use Wallpaper Engine for animated and interactive wallpapers. They’re fucking awesome!
I didn’t know I needed this until a second ago, but wow do i need this now. Thanks for the tip!
I have a folder with 598 pictures of stealth aircraft that are cycled through as wallpaper and screen saver.
I think I would make zooming noises everytime I use my computer with that setup
I use
#222e45. I think that it’s been constant since the 1990s or so.$ convert -size 200x200 "xc:#222e45" example.png
I don’t see it much these days, since I’m using sway, which does tiling window management. There’s almost always something fully covering it now.
I like black wallpaper. I like to keep the serial number of the machine visible. the wallpaper is black with the serial number.
my phone lock screen includes my imeis, mac address, bluetooth mac, model, and serial no
I’m just quirky like that
How long does it take you to know that number by heart?
/s
my laptop is mp25y316. but that’s also it’s system name.
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 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.
*Should also say I don’t use desktop icons like a dirty pleb >:3 i use ubuntu btw (and idrc if you use icons)
I have an anime girl wallpaper with a pink reddish theme
Patrician taste
I have a selection of natural scenes - some that I have taken myself, other found on the web - that rotate each two hours around the day. Night shots at night etc.
I’ve been known to say “look, my next desktop wallpaper!” before taking a picture.
I have a script that pulls a fresh image from NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day and sets it as a wallpaper. But I rarely see it because 99.9% of the time my windows are maximized and I don’t have things on the desktop.
I like this artist’s stuff for my wallpapers on all my devices except my work machine:
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m surprised by how many people are actually looking at their desktop … even having icons on it.
I see my wallpaper a few seconds after a restart (1-2 times months), when I accidentality minimise all the window or when connecting a new monitor.
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.
