Whats on Linux for
Christians
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Deck the HOUSE with LINUX COOLNESS fa la la la la, la
la la la... OK, OK, enough of that :-) Basically I
had this cool idea for using Linux as a display
medium for Christmas messages......
I am sure you have all seen those information
stations - they are everywhere now - even have them
to watch while you're in line at McDonalds. Mostly
they show small news snippets and then do product
advertising for different companies. Well, I thought
that was a pretty ingenious idea the first time I saw
one, and I immediately and instinctively knew that
Linux was just the right OS to build something like
that.
Since making one of those info stations appealed to
me I wondered what a really good use for one would
be. I soon realized that since it IS the season right
now, a great thing to do would be to display
Christmas messages on it - and while I was at it,
stuff it right into my window so everyone could see!
Hey, wey not?! This is a really great idea because as
a Christian I notice that all the modern Christmas
decorations are very *VERY* secular and I wanted
something more representative of my faith. Using this
project gave me something I could control the content
on quite easilly to suit my own taste.
Now since I am a computer geek I happen to have a
*few* extra computers laying around that I could use,
but you can use almost *any* old computer that you
can get Linux to run on. In my case, which may be
unique, I am actually running my program and pictures
on a Sparcstation running Linux but -=displaying=-
all my pictures on a Macintosh running MI/X. Like I
said, my situation may be unique since I have a local
area network at home to move data around on, but I'll
tell you how to do it on a single Linux box...
First of all you need a Linux box that can run
Xwindows. If you have one - great! If you don't have
one or don't know how - I am afraid that's far and
beyond the scope of this document. Anyway, get your
Linux box running xwindows and dig around the net and
find some really good free Christian Christmas
background and wallpaper images and download them
into a directory somewhere you can find. If you are a
creative person, go ahead and make some nice pics
using the Gimp or whatever image software you really
like and add them in that same directory. Make sure
that you have the "xview" package installed - or if
you use "xv" or some other software instead make sure
to adjust the following program accrodingly. When
you're ready to start displaying your Custom
Christmas messages open a terminal window and type
and run this program:
while x=1
do
for file in *.gif *.jpg
do
xsetbg -fullscreen -border black $file
done
done
Save the above to a file and run it, or to run the
entire thing as a one liner program stick each line
together with a ";" like this:
while x=1; do; for file in *.gif *.jpg; do;xsetbg
-fullscreen -border black $file; done; done
This program will take each GIF and JPG picture file
in the current directory and display them full size
on your xbackground one at a time, continuously, in
an infinate loop, until you stop the program. The
cool thing about this if you have a network is that
you can remove and add pics into that directory at
any time and the changes will be picked up on the
next pass through the picture list. No stopping and
starting again to update your pictures. Well, I hope
you all have enjoyed this little project as much as I
have - and yes I know my pictures aren't very good
:-) Anyway, have some fun with this, and if you
happen to have any Christian Christmas pictures I
could use, please send them my way - they are hard to
find! If you have a similar project or some other way
you use Linux around the Holidays, please let me know
- I would be very interested to hear from you!
Enjoy!
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