Wow boys, this is really cool. Neaveru, in his blog, finally completed the how-to have Dream Aquarium running as a desktop wallpaper in Linux! The result is absolutely similar to the one had with xwinwrap and a common Linux screensaver. Using xwinwrap, sadly, it was impossible to have DA working as a background. But now Neaveru created a fantastic tool to achieve this result aniway in Beryl.
What does it means? A dream come true. So, in Neaveru’s forum you can find the guide for Wine. Is there any difference with the crossover bottle I shared with you? Absolutely not. Firwst of all, this is Neaveru’s How-To. It doesn’t work only for Dream Aquarium but, hey, for any damned Windows application using Wine or Crossover! That is incredible, specially because you have to know that a lot of Windows Screensavers works great under Linux and Linux hasn’t got so many good 3D screensaver I have to say. I’ll poit this on another post, by the way. Just remember that you’ll be able to use this How-To with any windows application running in Wine or Crossover.
Now let’s see the differences beetwen the Wine version and the Crossover version. Remember that what you’ll read here is the same How-to from Neaveru (Original author) modifyed for Crossover users, nothing more. So, if you prefer using Wine, install Dream Aquarium using my How-To and then follow Neaveru’s Instructions. First of all, Crossover is nothing more than a patched Wine version with a lot of graphical configurations tools. So the basis are the same.
Assumptions:
1) You have Crossover installed
2) You have beryl running.
3) You have some amazing application that you want to run in fullscreen and in the background. (And possibly with different opacity, brightness, etc). I would recommend Dream Aquarium. If you are looking for a quick way to have DA working on your Linux PC, then download my crossover bottle prepared and configured for you and read the How-To I created. You can find everything you need to set up Dream Aquarium in less than 5 minutes with Crossover in your PC on This Post of mine.
4) You have downloaded the source code to Beryl Window Property Setter. It’s a small application Neaveru wrote to get this to work. Download the tarball, unpack it anywhere you prefer, enter into the unpacked dir, run a terminal from there and simply type make and hit enter. The program will be built and you’ll be ready to use it.
Instructions:
1) Run from menù Applications –> Crossover –> Configuration. In the new window, choose the bottle in wich you have Dream Aquarium installed and click on the configure button. On the new window, select the Control Panel tab and then click on the winecfg icon. In the newly opened window, go to the graphics tab and check “Emulate a virtual desktop”. Set “Desktop Size” to your desktop size. (I have mine set at 1280×800 and it runs smoothly). All other settings shouldn’t make a difference. Although, I have “Allow the window manager to control the windows” unchecked. Hit OK.
2) Run the program using normally the icon on your desktop or the entry into the Windows Applications menù. Now you should have the screensaver running in a window that is the size of your desktop. Make all settings (Number of fish, etc) you want now, because you won’t be able to change them afterwards.
3) Open a terminal and go into the folder in wich you built Neaveru’s tool. From that folder, run bwpropset as follows: ./bwpropset -fs -s -sp -st -nf -ni -b -op .8
Then you’ll see a crosshair. Select the Dream Aquarium window. If all goes well, you should have the window in the background of your desktop, much like xwinwrap.
Some more details:
-fs = fullscreen
-s = sticky
-sp = skip pager
-st = no focus
-ni = no input
-b = background
-op .8 = opacity at 80%
Play around with it until you find settings you like. Use the –help option for other features and possibilities. You’ll probably want to play specially with the -op option to set a different opacity depending on your desktop background. If you set too much opacity it will be likely that you won’t be able to see your icons anymore.
Now let’s see some additional suggestions and hints I’ll add to this.
1) How will you be able to quit Dream Aquarium now that it is on the background? Very simple. Run Applications –> Crossover –> Terminate Windows Applications and hit the restart button! Play attention because all the windows applications opened will be closed. Of course, you can choose to terminate the applications from a single bottle, so, if you installed my Dream Aquarium bottle, choose to restart it and all the other windows applications you might be running will continue to work normally.
2) To have Dream Aquarium working as a background on the top of its beaty, I suggest you to use a black (Not simply dark) background. Right click on the desktop, choose to set desktop wallpaper, from the list choose no wallpaper and then choose a black desktop color. Hit the done button and here we are, a black wallpaper. Try runnign DA with and then Neaveru’s tool with an opacity of 0.6 and you’ll absolutely have to say: “WooooooooooooooooW!” your icons will be perfectly visible while DA will work in the background as if it was completly opaque!
3) Breathe, be happy to run Linux and tell me: can Windows do something like that even if Dream Aquarium was originally designed for it? 😀 The answer is simple: no, it can’t. Here’s a nice youtube video I created to show off this fantastic effect!
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Question: I’m pretty new with Ubuntu Studio, so I was wondering what the screen behind the cube was, isn’t it a wallpaper? And if so, where can I get one? Any help is appreciated, Thanks.
Hello, those pictures you are talking about are called Skydomes. They work with Compiz Fusion or the old Beryl for example. A Skydome is the one use on my Art Of Cappuccino theme, for example:
http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/say-hallo-to-the-art-of-cappuccino-10-complete-theme-for-linux/
You can find many more skydomes if you visit:
http://www.beryl-themes.org
remember that to set a skydome you have to deal with the settings of Compiz Fusion or Beryl. For Beryl it’s immediate, right click on the berillum icon and select configurator. For COmpiz Fusion you have to install and run Compiz Config Settings Manager. If you are unsure how to install Compiz Fusion be sure to read my guide here:
http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/compiz-fusion-latest-eye-candy-things-how-to-get-em/
Many thanks for all your work in making our lives more fun… I have Dream Aquarium working fine in Beryl as a screen saver, however, I am reaching a snag making it was as a background, the problem is when I go to the unpacked bwpropset folder and run make, I get these errors:
~/Desktop/bwpropset-0.1$ make
cc -g -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -Wredundant-decls -c -o bwpropset.o bwpropset.c
bwpropset.c:18:22: error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:19:23: error: X11/Xutil.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:20:23: error: X11/Xatom.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:21:24: error: X11/Xproto.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:22:28: error: X11/cursorfont.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:24:34: error: X11/extensions/shape.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:25:36: error: X11/extensions/Xrender.h: No such file or directory
bwpropset.c:132: error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘selectWindow’
bwpropset.c:175: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:198: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:216: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:294: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:322: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:347: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:363: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:372: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c:379: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
bwpropset.c: In function ‘main’:
bwpropset.c:410: error: ‘Display’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:410: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
bwpropset.c:410: error: for each function it appears in.)
bwpropset.c:410: error: ‘dpy’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:412: error: ‘Window’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:412: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘win’
bwpropset.c:480: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XParseGeometry’
bwpropset.c:483: error: ‘XValue’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:483: error: ‘YValue’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:484: error: ‘WidthValue’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:484: error: ‘HeightValue’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:495: error: ‘win’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:509: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XOpenDisplay’
bwpropset.c:510: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XDefaultScreen’
bwpropset.c:513: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘selectWindow’
bwpropset.c:521: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XGetGeometry’
bwpropset.c:521: error: expected expression before ‘)’ token
bwpropset.c:519: warning: unused variable ‘dummy’
bwpropset.c:528: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘initializeFullscreen’
bwpropset.c:529: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘sendWmStateMessages’
bwpropset.c:530: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘sendWmLevelMessages’
bwpropset.c:533: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘setNoFocus’
bwpropset.c:535: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘setNoInput’
bwpropset.c:537: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘setNoBorder’
bwpropset.c:539: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XSync’
bwpropset.c:539: error: ‘False’ undeclared (first use in this function)
bwpropset.c:542: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘moveWindow’
bwpropset.c:544: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘resizeWindow’
bwpropset.c:547: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XCloseDisplay’
make: *** [bwpropset.o] Error 1
Any ideas? I can’t then run bwpropset b/c was not built…
many thanks
you’re welcome Matt.
Did you install build-essential and co? And if not, please ask to the creator of this tool, Neaveru, he’ll surely be able to help you 😉
You can find the link in this same article!
thanks again, yes I have build-essential (apt-get install build-essential shows latest version already installed)… I posted on Neaveru’s blog, hopefully he will know what is up. Thank you again for y’alls time, I can’t wait to get this running, my daughter (and I) will love it….
I know its been a long time but i was wondering if anyone knew the solution to Matt’s Problem.^^
Im receiving the exact same errors when i try to run Make from my Terminal.
And Suggestions?
i’ve got the same errors
you need to add a lot of -dev packages to get it compiled
start searching for X11/Xatom.h and install the corresponding package (repeat this for all *.h files)
It’s sufficient to do “apt-get install libxrender-dev” ubuntu will resolve dependencies which will get you everything you need. I’m having difficulty running the screensaver in a windowed mode, it always takes up the full screen so there is no way I can click on with little crosshairs. Any advice?
There is no bottle to download. I tried to do this from scratch with crossover but I can’t get it to work. I guess having your bottle might have been the key.