Modifying the GLSlideshow Screensaver settings in Ubuntu

UPDATE: This has been verified to work for 7.10 (Gutsy) as well as 7.04 (Feisty).

For whatever reason in Ubuntu the GLSlideshow screensaver settings are not accessible through the screensaver control panel. We're talking the basics here, like changing the filesystem path to the pictures to display, displaying more than one image (in true slideshow fashion), the duration to display a picture for, etc. So then how does one adjust these properties? This post answers that question.

GLSlideshow gets its settings from two files. The first is .xscreensaver, and the second is glslideshow.desktop. We'll tackle these one at a time.

Starting with .xscreensaver, this file should exist in your home directory; if it doesn't already exist go ahead and create it there. Add the following line to .xscreensaver, where the path represents the folder containing the images you wish to display (adjust the path appropriately for your environment):

imageDirectory: /home/username/Photos

Save this file and close it.

Next modify the settings in glslideshow.desktop to get GLSlideshow to perform as we would like. In Ubuntu this file is typically found here:

/usr/share/applications/screensavers/glslideshow.desktop

If this path isn't appropriate for your system, issue this command to locate this file:

slocate glslideshow.desktop

Edit gslideshow.desktop and look for the following entry:

Exec=glslideshow -root

Modify this line to instead read:

Exec=glslideshow -root -duration 15 -pan 15 -fade 5

Where:

• duration represents the amount of time (in seconds) to display an image for
• pan represents the amount of time (in seconds) to run the pan effect on this image
• fade represents the transition time (in seconds) to fade between images

You are free to add additional options if you wish; see the manpage for glslideshow for more options.

Save this file, then activate the screensaver. GLSlideshow should now present a slideshow of images from the specified directory.

Cites
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-212512.html