Andrew Wilkinson

I've run Gentoo as my primary desktop OS for the last six years, and I really like it. Its extreme flexibility does have one major draw back though - it requires a significant amount of time to keep updated. I used to have the time to do that, now though, I have better things to do.

At work I run Kubuntu on my desktop, which I'm very happy with. Work don't pay me to maintain my own desktop, and I've spent very little time setting it up.

The big question now is how to replace Gentoo with Ubuntu without losing all my data. I'll probably buy a new harddrive, I could do with a new one anyway. That seems like the safest, if slightly expensive route.

Now all I need to find is a few hours to make the switch...

It's almost Christmas, so why not make your KDE desktop all snowy?

The first step is to emerge/apt-get/yum (delete as appropriate) xsnow.

Next up you'll want to make it run when you log into your machine. Create a file in /home/%u/.kde/Autostart (where %u is your username) called xsnow-run. Add the following code to this file:

#!/bin/bash

xsnow

You can add parameters to control how xsnow runs, personally I prefer -notrees. Make the file executable by typing chmod u+x /home/%u/.kde/Autostart/xsnow-run. If, when you run xsnow, nothing appears go to the KDE control centre, then Desktop, then Behaviour and make sure 'Allow programs in desktop window' is selected.

If your computer spends some time at the login screen (and you use KDM) you might want to make that Christmassy too. In the directory /usr/kde/3.5/share/config/kdm edit the file kdmrc and add the line 'SetVRoot=true' under 'UseBackground=true'.
Next add the following lines to the file Xsetup:

xsnow &
echo $! > /var/run/xsnow.pid

Again, add any parameters to xsnow that you want. Finally, add the following lines to the file Xstartup:

if [ -f /var/run/xsnow.pid]; then
   kill `cat /var/run/xsnow.pid`
   rm -f /var/run/xsnow.pid
fi

Be careful though, editing your login manager's file could break your computer!

Hurrah! Now your computer is very Christmassy! Why not top it off with a festive wallpaper?