How to change default wallpaper in KDE?

Question

I'm on KDE 14.14.1 and want to change the default wallpaper. I want to make lots of changes as I want to build a customized kubuntu maybe call it a fork. But there's my problem. There are almost no recent tutorials about customizing Kubuntu (there are lots of old tutorials though).

So my question: Where do I find the configuration file(s) for changing the default wallpaper?

I know I can change them in the settings. However I won't be able to use the GUI when I'm building the iso file for my customized system, so I have to edit the files manually.

Solution 1

Default plasma wallpaper

The default plasma wallpaper is set in the default desktop theme: /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/

There is the metadata.desktop. It has wallpaper section. With the Kubuntu 14.04 / KDE 4.13:

[Wallpaper]
defaultWallpaperTheme=Elarun
defaultFileSuffix=.png
defaultWidth=2560
defaultHeight=1600

The 'Elarun' is described in the /usr/share/wallpapers/Elarun/

More of the KDE plasma theme details: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma4/ThemeDetails

Solution 2

A line userswallpapers=path/to/wallpaper in the file ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc is what you're looking for.

Btw, almost everything you wanted you may easy find in the .kde directory with grep -rniI pattern, where -r stands for recursive, -n stands for show me the line number where the pattern found, -i — ignore case, and the -I — ignore binary files, and the pattern is a text you're looking for. That's easy.

Comments

[okabekudo]

I don't know why but this cuts all my upper text -.- It should be: Hi, I'm on KDE 14.14.1

[fifaltra]

It cuts this presumably because we don't say "Hi" here, we get to the point directly. Inserting line breaks however is not frowned upon, and actually encouraged to increase readability :)

[okabekudo]

But that's user specified. If I now have made my iso and want to install my distro it won't use the wallpaper if I'm thinking correct as there is no user yet. So isn't there a systemwide config file ?

[Hi-Angel]

@okabekudo hm, well, I have no idea. I'm at the moment not in kde, but in «Awesome». But here's a hint: you may try to look for the default wallpaper name in the /usr/share/kde4/ directory with grep, that's where a default settings are stored. And perhaps you find where could be mentioned default wallpapers.