I have been having fun with my Ubuntu Linux system but the default wallpaper image is boring. How can I change it?
Glad to have you join the Linux family and Ubuntu Linux is a good first choice, easy to work with and includes a good graphical user interface too! In fact, the development team has put a ton of effort into have Linux be easy to work with for anyone who’s actually used Microsoft Windows or a MacOS X system. The answer to your question and many modern Ubuntu Linux questions is try a few things out, see what you find!
In the case of the desktop wallpaper on your Linux system, for example, turns out that a simple right-click will reveal everything you need to be able to change your background to a solid color, a gradient or, of course, a big, bright, beautiful photo, either your own or one that’s included with the distro.
Let’s have a look! To start, as I said, right click on the Desktop itself. A menu pops up:
As I have highlighted, you’ll want to choose “Change Desktop Background“. Do so and a window pops up with pretty much everything you need to fine tune your experience:
You can see that my current wallpaper is “Black hole” and that it’s at 3840 x 2400 resolution. To change to one of the other wallpaper photos already loaded into Ubuntu Linux, just click on it. Like the red poppies photo near the bottom:
This is called “The Land of Edonias” and it’s a lovely choice, no question. But… let’s explore some of the other options.
Click on “Wallpapers” and you’ll see there are three primary choices:
You can set any photo you want as your desktop with “Pictures Folder” (you can’t have it be too high a resolution, but too low and it’ll look pretty mediocre as your desktop, so look at the default sizes and try to use something at least that big). Instead, let’s just try a few solid colors and gradients by choosing, well, “Colors & Gradients“.
I’m going to set up a gradient by clicking on the “start” and “end” color boxes on the lower portion of the window. One I’ll set to purple, and the other to yellow:
Don’t like any of these colors? Choose “+” and you can mix your own. Once I’ve picked the two colors, the result is, well, not entirely attractive, but it’s definitely purple -> yellow:
Think I’ll stick with that photo of red poppies! Now, one more thing before we’re done. See on the bottom where it says “Theme” and then way on the other side there’s a pop-up that says “Ambiance (default)”? There are three choices:
Look at the colors on the title bar of the window in the above photo. That’s “Ambiance”. Now compare it to “Radiance”:
I would say that if you have a dark background, Radiance looks good but Ambiance is better for a light background like the sky. Your call, your taste, your preferences!
And that’s how it’s done.