Using background images for web pages is something most people do not know how to do correctly. Typically most will use an image that is not suitable for the text on the web page, as some parts of the image will be light and others dark. In addition, the image looks terrible tiled.

A small tiled image is by far the best thing to use if you want a background image for your social profile, blog or web pages. Not only does it load very quickly, but also looks the same on all resolutions and with the right tile looks seamless.

But how do you create one of these? Where do you get ideas from?

That’s easy, use BgPatterns. It is an app that exists only in the browser and is super-easy to use. Many different types of tiles are available in all colors. You’ll have a perfect image for tiling in no time. See video below for details.

Also bear in mind creating tiled images works great for computer wallpaper as well, particularly on older computers with limited video display abilities. If the redraw speed on your video card is slow but you still want a nice wallpaper, a small tiled image is definitely the way to go.

Two web sites that are all about eye candy for for Linux are KDE-Look and GNOME-Look.

You get your pick of the litter when it comes to.. well.. everything in a desktop environment using Linux. Wallpapers, themes, styles, window decorations, icons, cliparts, system sounds, splash screens, bootsplash, VLC themes, Xine themes.. the list goes on and on and on.

So if your KDE or GNOME is a bit on the boring side, not to worry, those two sites have you covered. And I mean really covered.

If you ever wanted to know where people get the super-cool stuff for Linux that makes it look so modern, sleek and so on – said people probably got it all (or at least a good chunk of it) from one of those two sites.

For fans of the movie Blade Runner, it doesn’t get much better than this. And heck, even if you’re not a Blade Runner fan you’ll still like this.

On the Blade Runner Wikipedia page there is an image from the movie of the "2019 Los Angeles" cityscape panorama seen here. It is an incredible widescreen image with a resolution of 4250×1844.

Here’s what it looks like in action – I tried it out on my dual monitor setup:

If you have dual (or more) monitors, you can set up easy multi-monitor wallpaper with DisplayFusion which is what I use.

Even if you’re still living in single-monitor world, the image is one of the best (if not the best) cityscape images I’ve ever seen and the quality is unreal. Very cool and definitely worth your time to take a look.

My Ubuntu desktop looks like this (click any image for full size):

When I have an app open it looks like this:

The way to get Ubuntu to look like this is fairly simple.

1. Download Microsoft core fonts to get Arial

Like it or not, the Arial font looks good on Windows just as Helvetica looks good on a Mac (unless you’re some typography nerd that insists on arguing which looks better/worse/etc.)

Arial looks even better when used in Ubuntu.

To get it, we need to go to Add/Remove, select "All available applications" from Show, then search for core and you’ll find it. Once you do, install it.

It looks like this:

2. Change fonts to Arial

In the Appearance section of Ubuntu is where the fonts are changed.

It looks like this:

3. Change font rendering to "Slight"

The standard font rendering in Ubuntu looks a bit "computery", so to soften it up we change the way fonts are rendered.

From the above screen, click the Details button at the bottom right, set "Smoothing" to Subpixel (LCDs) and "Hinting" to Slight. Then click close.

It looks like this:

4. Set toolbar button labels to Text besides items

While it’s true this takes up a bit more screen area width-wise, it saves screen space height-wise.

This is optional. I prefer text-beside-item because text-under-icon looks very "old".

It looks like this:

5. Increase the size of your mouse pointer

For whatever reason the mouse pointer is very tiny in Ubuntu by default and difficult to see even on lower resolution monitors.

You can adjust this by going to Appearance Preferences, select your theme and then click Customize, then the Pointer tab.

It looks like this (note the bottom – drag the slider to increase/decrease pointer size):

6. Set transparency on your panel(s)

Transparency = modern-looking. By default the panels are solid in Ubuntu. You can change this over to transparent by right-clicking an empty area of the panel, selecting Properties, click the Background tab, choose Solid color then drag the slider next to Style to set your desired transparency.

It looks like this:

6a. Go 100% transparent, bump up panel size for big icons

If using the standard "24" panel size doesn’t float your boat and you want something with larger icons, set the transparency to 100% and your panel size to 48.

When you do it will look like this:

Some may like this, others may not. Whether this works for you or not greatly depends on the wallpaper you choose (some wallpaper may "blank out" the text altogether).

7. Get a cool wallpaper

The wallpaper I use was formerly a standard image bundled with Ubuntu but they got rid of it for whatever reason.

The image is called Dawn of Ubuntu and it’s easily found via a Google image search. So if you like that Ubuntu wallpaper, go for it. I personally think it looks great.

~ ~ ~

By doing the above steps you can turn a plain Ubuntu desktop into something much more modern looking in just a few minutes.

First and foremost: This is not a new idea. Others have made wallpaper before purposely put into a grid-like fashion in this manner.

Why would you use wallpaper like this? Simply put, it’s easier to organize your stuff with it. If you’re the type who has a ton of icons on your desktop, you will find these wallpapers very handy to use.

Each wallpaper here can be clicked on to view full size so you can try it out.

To note: If you’re decent (or even semi-decent) with a graphics editing program, anyone can make these.

Plain Black (Standard)

Plain Black (Widescreen)

Colored Squares (Standard)

Colored Squares (Widescreen)

Aged Paper (Standard)

Aged Paper (Widescreen)

Patterns (Standard)

Patterns (Widescreen)

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Note: A new PCMU course will be offered soon so you can learn how to take photos like this even with the most inexpensive digital camera!

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Note: A new PCMU course will be offered soon so you can learn how to take photos like this even with the most inexpensive digital camera!

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Note: A new PCMU course will be offered soon so you can learn how to take photos like this even with the most inexpensive digital camera!

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Note: A new PCMU course will be offered soon so you can learn how to take photos like this even with the most inexpensive digital camera!

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Note: A new PCMU course will be offered soon so you can learn how to take photos like this even with the most inexpensive digital camera!

Standard

Widescreen

I’m currently working on a digital photography course for PCMU, so this week’s wallpapers are all real-life photos I’ve taken using a very inexpensive digital camera.

In the course materials you will find out how to take photos like the ones shown below.

In addition, all the photos below will be available as super-size wallpaper. One will be posted for each day of the week. To see them, subscribe to the PCMech feed via RSS.

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Standard

Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Standard

 
Widescreen

This is an exclusive RSS-feed-only wallpaper download. Click the image below to view, right-click (or command-click on Mac) and set as your wallpaper.

Standard

Widescreen