Customising the “Pictures folder” screensaver in Ubuntu Gutsy
One of the default screensavers included with Ubuntu 7.10 is one that will display whatever pictures you have saved in your ‘Pictures’ folder (/home/<username>/Pictures). The screensaver will randomly display a picture from this and any subfolders.
However, there’s no way of customsing which folder the screensaver reads if you want to use your Pictures folder to store pictures, but manage which of these images is used.
A workaround is as follows:
- Create a new folder somewhere (it doesn’t have to be under the ‘Pictures’ folder)
- Open a terminal window (select Terminal under Accessories)
- enter the following:
gksu gedit /usr/share/applications/screensavers/personal-slideshow.desktop
(enter your password if prompted)
- Scroll down to the line (near the end) that begins
Exec=slideshow
- Add the following after this command:
--location=<your pictures path>
(You will have to use standard escape sequences if you have spaces in the path.)
- Here’s an example:
Exec=slideshow --location=/home/myusername/Pictures/My\\ Screensaver
And that’s it. Save the file, and restart your screensaver. It will now only search for pictures in your chosen folder.
you can also create a symbolic link to your picture directory.
first click on places and then pictures.
with a little resizing you can startup anoher natalus window and navigate to your photo directory.
oyu need to high light the photo directory and hold down shift + controll key and while holding this down click and drag the directory to your photos directory.
Very nice work around. Pretty simple to follow, thanks for writing it up! :)
Ow yes, this “let’s show random pictures” has left me mildly embarrassed, after the screensaver of course chose the most shameful Halloween picture I possess, during the discussion that followed my presentation…
Chances are, you don’t mind those looney pics to appear (and you would want a large variety, so not a small dedicated folder) during your daily usage; however, the probability that you remember to choose a special folder whenever in public is small. Too small.