For the last month or so I’ve been using the GL Matrix screensaver built into Gnome as my desktop background, and I’m probably not ever going back to a standard background. Other then the fact that it only takes up 10~15 megabytes to run, it doubles as a screensaver. Finding good 1680×1050 backgrounds isn’t an easy task either..

At any rate, if you would like to use the GL Matrix screensaver as your background you must first disable the nautilus desktop:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Now let’s make the desktop entry for our xserver autostart:

gedit ~/.config/autostart/glmatrix.desktop

Just paste the following into your editor and then save it:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=No name
Name[en_IN]=Desktop matrix
Exec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Once you have done that, restart Gnome by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

Going back to the original nautlius desktop is simple:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautlius/preferences/show_desktop true && nautilus