Bing Picture Of The Day As Desktop Wallpaper?

Answer :

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to install variety. It is a wall-paper manager that really does an excellent job to change your wallpaper at the frequency you want.

Here are some of its settings:

• the frequency of the download
• the frequency of changing the image (once a day, at every reboot, every minute,...)
• where you want to download your images from
• where you want to store them on your computer
• quotes (either automatically or from a source)
• a nice clock.

There is also a setting to run it at login. If you enable that and then add your bing image of the day url (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=picture+of+the+day&qpvt=picture+of+the+day&FORM=IGRE?), you are all set.

It can be found in the software center and it has a 5* rating!

Here are some screenshots:

I wrote a little node script that does exactly that : https://github.com/dorian-marchal/bing-daily-wallpaper

To install it, you'll need nodejs :

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm 

Installation :

In the command line, run :

sudo npm install -g bing-daily-wallpaper 

Usage :

To change the wallpaper, do (you can add this command to your startup apps) :

bing-daily-wallpaper 

Some time ago I found the following script (I don't remember exactly where in this moment, but when I will find, I will add the source also) which one I changed a little and which is working great for what you asked if is set as a cron job (see here how to do this):

#!/bin/bash  # export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable useful when the script is set as a cron job PID=$(pgrep gnome-session) export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS /proc/$PID/environ|cut -d= -f2-)   # $bing is needed to form the fully qualified URL for # the Bing pic of the day bing="www.bing.com"  # $xmlURL is needed to get the xml data from which # the relative URL for the Bing pic of the day is extracted # # The mkt parameter determines which Bing market you would like to # obtain your images from. # Valid values are: en-US, zh-CN, ja-JP, en-AU, en-UK, de-DE, en-NZ, en-CA. # # The idx parameter determines where to start from. 0 is the current day, # 1 the previous day, etc. xmlURL="http://www.bing.com/HPImageArchive.aspx?format=xml&idx=1&n=1&mkt=en-US"  # $saveDir is used to set the location where Bing pics of the day # are stored.  $HOME holds the path of the current user's home directory saveDir="$HOME/Pictures/BingDesktopImages/"  # Create saveDir if it does not already exist mkdir -p $saveDir  # Set picture options # Valid options are: none,wallpaper,centered,scaled,stretched,zoom,spanned picOpts="zoom"  # The desired Bing picture resolution to download # Valid options: "_1024x768" "_1280x720" "_1366x768" "_1920x1200" desiredPicRes="_1366x768"  # The file extension for the Bing pic picExt=".jpg"  # Extract the relative URL of the Bing pic of the day from # the XML data retrieved from xmlURL, form the fully qualified # URL for the pic of the day, and store it in $picURL  # Form the URL for the desired pic resolution desiredPicURL=$bing$(echo $(curl -s $xmlURL) | grep -oP "<urlBase>(.*)</urlBase>" | cut -d ">" -f 2 | cut -d "<" -f 1)$desiredPicRes$picExt  # Form the URL for the default pic resolution defaultPicURL=$bing$(echo $(curl -s $xmlURL) | grep -oP "<url>(.*)</url>" | cut -d ">" -f 2 | cut -d "<" -f 1)  # $picName contains the filename of the Bing pic of the day  # Attempt to download the desired image resolution. If it doesn't # exist then download the default image resolution if wget --quiet --spider "$desiredPicURL" then      # Set picName to the desired picName     picName=${desiredPicURL##*/}     # Download the Bing pic of the day at desired resolution     curl -s -o $saveDir$picName $desiredPicURL else     # Set picName to the default picName     picName=${defaultPicURL##*/}     # Download the Bing pic of the day at default resolution     curl -s -o $saveDir$picName $defaultPicURL fi  # Set the GNOME3 wallpaper gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file://$saveDir$picName"  # Set the GNOME 3 wallpaper picture options gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options $picOpts  # Remove pictures older than 30 days #find $saveDir -atime 30 -delete  # Exit the script exit