Package:Feh

Feh

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What is feh?

feh is an X11 image viewer aimed mostly at console users. Unlike most other viewers, it does not have a fancy GUI, but simply displays images. It is controlled via commandline arguments and configurable key/mouse actions.Feh homepage

USE-Flags

curl

Add support for the Client-Side URL transfer library.

debug

Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces, see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/backtraces.xml.

exif

Add support for reading EXIF headers from JPEG and TIFF images.

xinerama

Add support for the xinerama X11 extension, which is mandator if you work in a multiple monitor setup.

Installing feh

After adding your USE flags (or not) to /etc/portage/package.use/feh, you can emerge feh:

root # emerge feh

Using feh

Set desktop background

feh has several options for setting your desktop background:

• --bg-center: Center the image file on the background. If the image file is smaller in resolution than the screen resolution, it will have black borders around it.
• --bg-scale: Fit the image to the background without repeating it, cutting parts of the image off, or using black borders. Because of these changes, the aspect ratio is not preserved.
• --bg-fill: Similar to --bg-scale except that it tries to fill the image to the screen while maintaining its aspect ratio. This may result in parts of the image being cut off.
• --bg-max: Similar to --bg-fill, except that scales the image to the maximum size that fits the screen. This leads to black borders on one side.
• --bg-tile: Tile the image across the screen.

Here is an example:

root # feh --bg-scale ~/path/to/picture.jpg

Source fehbg to set your wallpaper in Openbox

After you have run feh one time, the directory of the image file is stored in ~/.fehbg. This file can be sourced in your .config/openbox/autostart to load the picture instead of typing out feh --bg-scale /picture/location.jpg:

   ~/.config/openbox/autostart

...
~/.fehbg &
...

Change wallpaper automatically

With the help of a simple bash script, feh can be configured to automatically change the desktop background. To accomplish this task, we have to create the bash script. Open up your favorite editor and create a script that looks something like the following, where sleep 1m can be configured to any time interval that you want. Name the script whatever you want. Something like WallpaperShuffle will work just fine:

   WallpaperShuffle (bash source code)

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
    feh --bg-scale "$(find ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/ -type f | sort -R | tail 1)" &
    sleep 1m &
done

   Note

~/Pictures/Wallpapers/ can be replaced by any directory that you have a hoard of image files in.

After creating this script, we have to source it in our window manager's startup file. For example, if you are using Openbox, source it in .config/openbox/autostart:

   .config/openbox/autostart

...
WallpaperShuffle &
...