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Decorate Ubuntu for Christmas 12/19/11

‘Tis the season to be jolly, apparently, so what could be better than gathering the family around and decorating your Linux system with a bit of Christmas cheer!

In this article we’ll take 2 minutes to transform your Ubuntu box to an enchanted winder wonderland (or at the very least, stop it from looking like Scrooge’s desktop).

Linux Christmas Wallpaper

Here’s my favourite Christmas wallpaper for Ubuntu. Little Tux is dressed up as Santa and the presents have Ubuntu themed wrapping. It was drawn by Anne Dupond using Blender and she has made a couple of different versions which can be downloaded here.

A non-geeky (is that a word? think I might start using that a lot…) alternative is this beautiful christmas tree wallpaper by deleket at deviantart.com.

Just follow the links to download one of these to your local hard drive and then installing it couldn’t be easier. Just right click anywhere on your desktop and select “Change Desktop Background.”, browse to your downloaded file, double click it and then sit back and bask in the Yuletide spirit!

Linux Christmas Screen Savers

Now we need something to delight the rest of the world when you’re not actually at your computer. Some Snowy Screen Savers me-thinks!

The easiest one to get up and running is Fuzzy Flakes and I think it is quite nice. It’s bright and cheerful enough. Just go to System -> Preferences -> Screensaver Preferences and choose Fuzzy Flakes.

Not Christmassy enough for Ya!?!

OK, there will be someone reading this who says that having a penguin in a Santa hat and a few snowflakes on their screensaver just isn’t treating Christmas with the respect it deserves. No, these people want to spend a couple of hours bashing away on the Ubuntu terminal to pimp up their Linux Christmas. Well, for those hardy souls I can recommend jumping over to UbuntuGuide.net and having a look at firstly how to enable “Snow” on Compiz Fusion and then customising a wintery wallpaper. Warning: Not for someone who has a life, or for children under the age of 4.

Want to give a Christmas Present?

Have you any favorite wallpapers or ways to make your Linux box more Christmassy? Stick them in the comments box below and share some Christmas love…