Variety, a cool wallpaper changer that works with most desktop environments (KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Unity, GNOME Shell, Cinnamon or Pantheon), reached version 0.4.19 today, bringing support for Panoramio as image source, support for the Enlightenment desktop environment, fixes for Flickr and Wallpapers.net and more.
For those not familiar with Variety, this is a wallpaper changer that automatically downloads wallpapers from sources such as Wallbase, Flickr, Wallpapers.net, Desktoppr, custom RSS feeds, NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day as well as World Sunlight Map: a live Earth wallpaper which changes throughout the day. Using it, you can get a new, beautiful wallpaper automatically at the interval you set in the application preferences.
The application can even apply fancy filters to the images: grayscale, heavy blur, oil painting, charcoal painting, pointilism or pixellate as well as display quotes or the time on top of the wallpaper.
Changes in Variety 0.4.19:
- added support for Panoramio: this allows fetching images from a certain map area;
- added support the Enlightenment desktop environment (E17, E18, E19)
- reorganized indicator menu;
- easier Facebook sharing: you no longer have to enter your login credentials in an embedded Webkit browser to share wallpapers on Facebok - instead, the login now happens in your default browser;
- new Wallpaper Selector AppIndicator menu entry: this displays random images from your enabled image sources in Variety's thumbnail bar
- unicode support;
- fixed Flickr and Wallpapers.net wallpaper sources;
- fixed AppIndicator icon size under Xfce and GNOME Fallback;
- Other bug fixes (Cinnamon-related fixes, etc.).
Here are a few screenshots with these changes:
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| Variety Ubuntu AppIndicator |
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| Panoramio - to use it, open the Variety Preferences and on the General tab click Add and select Panoramio |
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| Wallpaper Selector |
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| Variety AppIndicator icon fixed for GNOME Flashback |
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| Variety AppIndicator icon fixed for Xfce |
Install Variety Wallpaper Changer in Ubuntu or Linux Mint
Ubuntu / Linux Mint (and derivatives) users can install the latest Variety by using its official PPA. To add the PPA and install the application, copy / paste the following commands in a terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peterlevi/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install varietyImportant notes: according to its installation page, Variety requires the AppIndicator plugin for Xfce and the AppIndicator Support extension for GNOME Shell. For KDE, you need to follow the instructions from HERE.
For other Linux distributions, see the official Variety installation instructions.
Report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.
