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A while ago, we published an article on a script which generates an XML wallpaper set from the National Geographic 2009 wallpaper contest but what if you want to use different wallpapers to generate such an XML file (if you don't know what's this, think of the "Cosmos" automatically changing wallpaper which comes with the Gnome 2.28, like in Ubuntu Karmic)?

ozhoo @ ubuntuforums (thanks!) has created a bash script which generates such an .xml file for Gnome: DOWNLOAD.


Usage:

1. Once you download the script, make it executable:
chmod +x gnome-backgrounds-xmlgen.sh


If you wish to change the time between each wallpaper and the transition duration, open the script and edit this part (lines 23-27):
# time to show background (seconds)
WALLDURATION=900.0

# transition time (seconds)
TRANSDURATION=5.0


2. Then, in a terminal (navigate to the folder where backs.sh is located, obviously), run it like this:
./gnome-backgrounds-xmlgen.sh /path/to/a/wallpapers/folder


Replacing "/path/to/a/wallpapers/folder" with... well, it's pretty self-explanatory. The script will generate a file called "backgrounds.xml".

3. To set the newly created backgrounds.xml as your wallpaper, right click on your desktop, select "Change Desktop Background", then select "Add", and then on the file type, select "ALL":


That's it.