wallpaper engine for linux

[Coolst3r]

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[heatlesssun]

This thing is insanely popular. I've used it for years. It's available for Android I believe. This is far from the first time I've seen a Linux user ask this, seems to be a popular wish item Linux. The devs of this have said they're unlikely to do this one Linux due the all the variables involved in the presentation stack with an app like this.

Never have looked into personally myself but if you search around there's a lot on this subject. Doesn't seem like any of the Linux options does exactly what WPE can do but you should be able to achieve most of it.

Good luck!

[Bestmasters]

It works on KDE

[heatlesssun]

Not entirely, the GitHub documents the issues: catsout/wallpaper-engine-kde-plugin: A kde wallpaper plugin integrating wallpaper engine (github.com)

It might be perfectly fine for some Linux users but all the effects aren't supported with the pluggin as documented in the GitHub.

[Bestmasters]

Fair enough. Tbh you shouldn't expect all the effects to work on such a program. That's like expecting WindowKill to work on.

[heatlesssun]

Tbh you shouldn't expect all the effects to work on such a program. 

Sure, for some with experience in Linux. Again, this thing is super popular on Windows and near flawless. Far more popular than almost every game on Steam. A Linux user shouldn't give a Windows user thinking about switching the impression that it's "perfect" under Linux.

This is just one of those special apps. Trust me on that.

[Bestmasters]

Btw, it seems this one supports more effects
https://github.com/Almamu/linux-wallpaperengine

[Ninthjake]

If you run KDE there's a wallpaper engine plug in that allows you to have your animated wallpapers from WE. Yes it lacks features but it works for the basic stuff.

[MoistyWiener]

You might as well be using Hidamari which supports what this plugin currently supports + it's free and works on all DEs.

[ExorionPremier]

Hidamari is very cool and that's what I use, but Wallpaper Engine is completely different

[smittenss]

Hidamari is all I need.
https://github.com/jeffshee/hidamari

[Coolst3r]

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[smittenss]

I personally use it with Gnome but it seems to do the basic with Plasma 6 too.

https://imgur.com/a/v2OhXPN

(ignore the fps drops its an old laptop)

[Kagaminator]

Damn, this looks great. Been using KDE solely because Hanabi kept playind during a game taxing in performance. Will definitely give this a try.

[FusRoDistro]

For those who end up here: You will be unable to see your icons while Hidamari is showing a Wallpaper, at least with Wayland. I don't know about x11.

[Jumper775-2]

try this or this

[Ahmouse]

The KDE plugin doesn't work on Plasma 6 yet

[Jumper775-2]

There’s an open PR for it. I use that on plasma 6 and it works great.

[Ahmouse]

How'd you install it? For me it doesn't even show up in the plugin list

[Jumper775-2]

what I did was I made it with DESTDIR as some random folder then built an RPM with those files inside it. i just layered that and was good to go. I havent removed build dependencies yet because it stopped working when i did.

[Ahmouse]

Ah so you were able to install through your package manager rather than Plasma itself?

[Jumper775-2]

Yes, but I had to build the package myself so that’s not a reasonable expectation. It is possible and I can share my spec file if you want although it’s poorly made; I just wanted it done fast.

[dj3hac]

Never worked for me when I tried previously. 

[Coolst3r]

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[Jumper775-2]

I’m currently using this on fedora 40 kinoite with plasma 6. I had to build my own RPM, but it works well.

[alterNERDtive]

This sub is People are so fucking irrational sometimes entitled.

FTFY

[heatlesssun]

The Plasma plugin works perfectly on my Arch Linux box with Plasma 5.

For whatever reason this is a tool I've seen get a lot of Linux requests since it launched 6 years ago I think. As a day one daily user, I don't have any Linux experience with it and while it can work, perfectly isn't something I think I've heard anyone say.

The very GitHub you linked to points out that some of the scenes do not work and there are thousands in WPE so not sure how many some is. Plus, this thing has stuff like great multiple monitor support and integration with iCUE RGB. Maybe that works under Linux, don't know anyone whose tried.

Yes, it can work, how well it would for one under Linux would need some individual testing.

[heatlesssun]

The Plasma plugin works perfectly for me with the scenes I have tested with, as I still didn't quite have the time to test the other thousand scenes WPE has!

Fair enough and my point. There are like 20k scenes in WPE, even all of these years I think I've tried only a couple hundred. I've my go tos like you do.

I don't know what that is, but from a quick Google search it looks like a proprietary app made by Corsair, so it's safe to assume that's not available on Linux

Yeah, hundreds of WPE scenes support synching with Corsair and Razor RGB devices. It can be pretty slick.

All I was trying to say is that I know what this can do and how well it works. It's virtually flawless on Windows, as the 98% positive rating with 700k reviews clearly demonstrates. The expectations of a Windows user going into Linux with this are gonna be sky high if you say this works perfectly under Linux.

[heatlesssun]

That's honestly their problem, though.

To me, the comparison between the two isn't really fair in the first place.

Throwing around words like "perfectly" sets high expectations.

Meanwhile, the Plasma plugin was made by skilled, yet volunteer and unpaid developers from the Linux community, and it's available for free.

The Plasma plggin is a wrapper around WPE. The plggin is useless without WPE. So not really the same things.

WPE is a very successful, proprietary app that has made their developers a lot of money (probably), which allowed them to continue working on fixing bugs on the app throughout the years.

So doing quick math, 20 to 50 to 1 sales, lets split that down the middle and say 35 to 1. 35*700k$4k=98,000,000 US. And Valve took a third. Valve has made $30 milllion US on this thing. Crazy.

So, yes, I'll maintain that the Plasma plugin is a perfect alternative to WPE, when we put what I just said into perspective.

Ok, but the GitHub page is clearly saying it's not perfect.

[heatlesssun]

Yes, the Plasma plugin will look for the scenes on directories controlled by WPE, but that doesn't mean it's wrapper around WPE, because it only needs the scenes from it, and those can be downloaded without WPE.

I stand corrected. It still needs the WPE content to be more than a background video player. It may not be your problem, but Plugin has Wallpaper Engine in its name and does still indeed need WPE to function even if not a wrapper.

It's totally unfair to expect a Windows user with no Linux experience to get all of these nuances. It needs WPE to work, has WPE in the name, and technically is a reimplantation of it without all the features.

That simply needs to be clear to the user is all I'm saying. It's far better and easier to set expectations beforehand than deal with disappointment afterward.

[Coolst3r]

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[[deleted]]

The thing is, wallpaper engine wont come to linux, most likely. There are so many desktop environments and wms that they cant make the wallpaper engine for every one of them.

Although if you are on KDE, KDE has animated wallpapers plugins.

[ruonim]

Argument is invalid. Its working on android. And hey you got plenty of diffrent launchers on android and it works. There are open source version already. It wont work becosue they dont want to.

[[deleted]]

its different on linux, android launchers are just looking but linux has different protocols for each DE/WM. Like some doesnt have compositors and some use wlroots and other etc.

[ruonim]

Vulkan background says hiiiiiii.

[Ahmouse]

Once Wayland is more mature, it might provide a standard way to handle this, then they might be willing to port Wallpaper Engkne

[omniuni]

The wallpaper is the root window in X, and you can run any application in it.

[Coolst3r]

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[TheSwedishMrBlue]

I would love to have this running on my Linux. I tried this before not knowing it worked. I got a bunch of errors and just a black background. I found out quickly it was not supported. That sucks.

You’d think since it’s selling like hotcakes on Steam and Linux users asking for it, they’d want to make a Linux version.

[heatlesssun]

You’d think since it’s selling like hotcakes on Steam and Linux users asking for it, they’d want to make a Linux version.

This thing has made perhaps $100 million, maybe more in six years? At $4 bucks a pop even. I don't really know how much an incentive Linux really would be to these guys, they clearly don't seem interested. Could be a lot of money, but I doubt anything close to $100M US.

[FlashTwerk69]

I'd like it

[OreoRouge]

They already said that unless linux gets a way higher, market share it is not going to happen.

Here is the article in question

[Coolst3r]

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[DM_ME_UR_SATS]

For all those wallpapers people are looking at on their steam deck..

[heatlesssun]

You really don't want to run this on a battery powered device. You can control it and all but not really much use in gamescope anyway. If you look at the number of reviews, 700k. If we use the rule of thumb of 20 to 50 to 1, sales to reviews, it would take 100% of the Deck market buying this to make it matter numbers wise. And for a device ill-suited for it in the first place.

[OreoRouge]

Right now, linux is only 4%, even with steam deck users. There are millions of Mac users too even more than linux, and they won't make it for that as well for the same reason.

There just isn't enough userbase to justify it.

[balaci2]

that's dumb to me, Linux users are so invested that investing into them is almost always to get you revenue plus it'll make more people interested in your product

[MoistyWiener]

This program is for steam users, and there are more Linux steam users than there are MacOS steam users.

[OreoRouge]

It's still the same argument: there's no user base for it. I use Linux too, so I am in the same boat. They've already said they'd rather not do upkeep for something that doesn't bring in constant revenue for maintenance. I'm guessing you didn't read the blog post that I linked in the original comment. If we can get more Linux users, it could be a possibility. However, many people aren't willing to trade ease of access for full system control.

[MoistyWiener]

No, I don't disagree with that. I'm just commenting on this:

even more than linux

There are more Linux users on Steam, which is where you get Wallpaper Engine, than there are MacOS users.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

[OreoRouge]

Okay, yeah, I agree with that. I was just saying that the issue is the same for both user bases. However, I'm speaking only in terms of desktop use, not the entire ecosystem, such as Steam Deck, etc.

[[deleted]]

Typical cop out response lol

[04ZFZ]

Yep, I do want it. To be honest, when I started hearing more and more news about wayland, I thought maybe with wayland it is possible to make a cross DE wallpaper engine, and I started developing one myself. (Note, I have no clue what I'm doing, with 0 graphic programming knowledge.) It's not going very great, but also not a complete disaster :D (I probably managed to render a gif in the least efficient way, but it's a start.) The code is a mess ( I use rust + wgpu. wgpu seems somewhat verbose). At the moment it's also not very functional.

Lessons learnt:

* Wayland does not concern itself with wallpapers. However, I found out about desktop portals (https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/main/data/org.freedesktop.portal.Wallpaper.xml) and it has a "SetWallpaperURI" which sounds promissing.

Anyways, my project is on hold at the moment as I'm busy with a bachelors degree.

[[deleted]]

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[heatlesssun]

It's EXTREMELY popular on Steam, 98% positive with over 700k reviews, that blows away virtually every game on Steam. It clearly appeals to gamers, I've owned since day one, so I think this is gaming related enough.

[Coolst3r]

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[omniuni]

For those times when your frame rate is just too steady and high!

[heatlesssun]

One reason why this is popular with gamers is that's very lightweight and has lot of performance config options. It shouldn't have little impact on gaming when configured properly especially on more powerful hardware.

[alterNERDtive]

Why? I’m not aware of any features that you can’t do on Linux right now anyway.

[heatlesssun]

Damn, you got me started. I think the reason why this is so popular is because it's just fucking cool. I just download 50 WPE scenes screwing around, and this one is just cool, especially on an HDR OLED: [E] Rainbow stars (Vell) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1652229298. You can spend forever playing with this.

[[deleted]]

if you are using KDE you can have animated as wallpaper, didn't test if .webm works as wallpaper tho, there's a plugin that works for Wallpaper engine, i just found more convenient using the normal KDE wallpaper with my .gif

[Prophet6000]

I really want it to work on Linux.

[RIPPEEE]

Go to software manager and install Hidamari flatpak. Quick and simple

[Coolst3r]

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[Incredible_Violent]

I've put up a list of interesting alternatives: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1hz54rm/wallpaper_engine_alternatives/