How is linux-wallpaperengine supposed to work on NixOS?

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1

Does anyone have any idea how the linux-wallpaperengine package is supposed to work on nixos?

There’s not much information that I can gather from its github page to make sense of it.

2

is supposed to work

Which part is not working exactly? I am not really familiar with the package though…

3

The Readme ist quite extensive: GitHub - Almamu/linux-wallpaperengine: Wallpaper Engine backgrounds for Linux!

It seems you first have to download the official (paid) Wallpaper Engine app via Steam before you can display wallpapers downloaded with that app via linux-wallpaperengine.

4

Let’s start with the 5.3 section. If the package is already in the nixpkgs then there is no point in doing it. And what about 5.4? The derivation should handle that, right?

Section 5.5 mentions a folder named ./linux-wallpaperengine, but I cannot find any reference to it in the derivation source code. Do I have to create this folder manually?

And then, the Github page claims that the software can automatically detect where the subscribed backgrounds are stored. But that does not work.

For instance, the wallpapers are stored in ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/workshop/content/431960, but the software does not recognize them.

5

I’m sure there’s something that I’m doing wrong, I just don’t know what.

I’ll leave the github page below, for anyone who might want to look at the Readme:

6

That is not a folder. It is the binary you get when you build wallpaperengine manually.
If you use the NixOS package it is this one on current stable: /nix/store/9gqp938hq4f0wh0h6cx8915ahqqczds5-linux-wallpaperengine-unstable-2023-09-23/bin/linux-wallpaperengine

To test, bring linux-wallpaperengine into your search path with nix-shell -p linux-wallpaperengine or nix shell nixpkgs#linux-wallpaperengine then run linux-wallpaperengine ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/workshop/content/431960. According to the documentation this should open a window and display a wallpaper.

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7

Thank you for the kind explanation! It’s just as you said. Unfortunately, the window is not working, but greyed out. Even so, that’s more to do with either the desktop environment or the project itself, so I’ll consider this issue as ended.