Last Updated on May 25, 2022
Who loves eye candy? Don’t be shy — you can raise both hands!!
Linux Candy is a new series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We’re only going to feature open-source software in this series.
I’m not going to harp on about the tired proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. But there’s a certain element of truth here. If you spend all day coding neural networks, mastering a new programming language, sit in meetings feeling bored witless, you’ll need some relief at the end of the day. And what better way by making your desktop environment a bit more memorable.
Let’s start our candy adventure with WallGen. It’s a small command-line utility that generates HQ poly wallpapers with only a few text arguments for inputs. Depending on these arguments, you can create shape-based patterns, randomly filled surfaces, and even image-based patterns.
Installation
This project hasn’t made an official release yet. To get started, clone the project’s repository with the command, and install with pip.
$ git clone https://github.com/SubhrajitPrusty/wallgen.git
$ cd wallgen
$ sudo pip install --editable .
Or better yet, install the software with a single command.
sudo pip install -e git+https://github.com/SubhrajitPrusty/wallgen#egg=wallgen
There’s a fair few packages that’ll be installed for you, although you’ll probably find some of the required package are already present on your system. Here’s the packages needed:
- SciPy – a Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering.
- NumPy – fundamental package for scientific computing with Python.
- matplotlib – pure Python 2D plotting library designed to bring publication quality plotting to Python.
- pillow – fork of PIL – Python Imaging Library.
- click – a Python package for creating beautiful command line interfaces in a composable way with as little code as necessary.
- scikit-image – a collection of algorithms for image processing.
- networkx – a Python package for the creation, manipulation, and study of the structure, dynamics, and functions of complex networks.
- imageio – a Python library that provides an easy interface to read and write a wide range of image data, including animated images, volumetric data, and scientific formats.
- pyparsing – a Python parsing module.
pip will also install scikit-image, decorator, cycler, python-dateutil, six, and setuptools.
By default, Python applications installed for a non-root user live in $HOME/bin or $HOME/.
local/bin. With WallGen installed, let’s create some mesmerizing eye candy.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation – poly command
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation – poly command
Page 3 – pic command
Page 4 – shape command
Page 5 – slants command
Page 6 – Summary