Version: (using KDE 4.0.5) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages Plasma should set the background of the root window; in that way, conky will automatically fit in with the plasma background. As it is right now, I have to manually run fbsetbg (or similar) to set the root window background.
set it to what? plasma does not follow the traditional "here's a wallpaper picture" paradigm. you can use it like that, but there is absolutely nothing that keeps it that way. zooming, dynamic backgrounds and more all make this "fun". personally i'm of the opinion that things painting to the root window and picking stuff up from the root window is Bad and maybe even Foolish in this day and age. if apps want translucency, they should be using argb visuals.
> plasma does not follow the traditional "here's a wallpaper picture" paradigm. i'll take your word on that, i don't know the inner workings of plasma as well as i think you do. all i have used is the "Configure Desktop" dialog (right-click the desktop), which follows the traditional "here's a wallpaper picture", with no zooming, no dynamic backgrounds and no "fun". i was thinking "set the root window to the same as the plasma window" (i.e. the desktop). > personally i'm of the opinion that things painting to the root window and picking stuff up from the root window is Bad and maybe even Foolish in this day and age. oh; i didn't know it was a bad idea. could you briefly explain to me why that is? i didn't notice any badness when using conky with compiz and nautilus; could you explain to me what bad things happened that i wasn't aware of? i'm not playing the devil's advocate here--i'm just a curious geek who would like to understand his toys a little better. > if apps want translucency, they should be using argb visuals. it'd be great if semitransparency got replaced by real transparency, no argument there. however, semitransparent apps exists today, and i would like to use one. is it somehow possible to satisfy your desire for kde to do the technically right thing (a fine goal) and simultaneously satisfy my desire to have conky's semitransparency match what plasma is showing (a not unreasonable goal, i'd suggest)? how about when the user sets the wallpaper, what gets rendered onto the plasma window also gets written to a file--then the user can run a script that runs fbsetbg on that file and be happy? or how about having a way to set the wallpaper from the command-line? then the user can do that, and invoke fbsetbg simultaneously (hey, that'll work with my old xplanet script).
> could you briefly explain to me why that is? because the idea of one app painting into it and everyone else reading out of it is a common understanding, but not a guarantee. a compositing window manager could just as easily render everything into the root window itself, for instance, and then where would we be? =) no, imho, (and i've heard this from various x devs as well) the root window should be left well enough alone by applications and let x.org and the window manager deal with it. > however, semitransparent apps exists today, and i would like to use one. this the beauty of having the code: it can be fixed. particularly if it has maintainers. fake translucency is a bad hack that we dealt with because it was all we had. we have something better now that won't break randomly on us. let's use it. i'd suggest a mail to the conky devs =) > simultaneously satisfy my desire to have conky's semitransparency match what > plasma is showing (a not unreasonable goal, i'd suggest)? fix conky to use an argb visual for real translucency. =) > how about when the user sets the wallpaper, what gets rendered onto the plasma > window also gets written to a file--then the user can run a script that runs > fbsetbg on that file and be happy? that would be Really Bad(tm) for performance, particularly on non-static wallpapers. it also doesn't resolve the issue when zooming out, etc. this would simply be a hack (that would probably require a configuration option) that would work for some people some/most of the time and break other times. that's not where we want to take plasma. > or how about having a way to set the wallpaper from the command-line? then that will likely work when we add dbus interfaces to plasma in 4.2. it would still only work with *some* containments, would still break when using the ZUI, etc. but at least it wouldn't require messing up plasma internally as well =)