I'm looking for animated images for my background in linux and all the good quality ones are coming as a .dream file. I know that this is for the Deskscapes program in vista but I was hoping that there was a way to convert .dream files to something I can use as a background. Obviously this isn't an emergency but I'm kinda curious as to figuring this out. I've spent the last hour and a half googling this, and I have nothing to show for it :P

After a bit of googling myself, I don't think it's possible to directly convert them, as it's a proprietary format with a (no-doubt) complex internal structure combining video with various control features. Most probably only DeskScapes can handle them. I did find this page however, that says that DeskScapes also stores a backup in .wmv format on Windows, which is convertible. So it looks like you'd need an active version of the program running on Windows to get the video you need.

I suppose there might also be other Windows programs that can directly convert the format or extract the video streams inside that can run under wine, but I didn't search for any myself.

I did a couple of hours more of research and found pretty much the same thing. The whole purpose of this was because I wanted a animated background. Turns out this pry isn't a good idea just yet. I tried xwinwrap and even on my comp with 8 gb ram 2 gb graphics card and quad-core I was getting lock-ups with even simple animations. Of course this xwinwrap is pretty old and ran through the terminal which I'm not great at. Also it wasn't really made specifically to do this so I'm sure its pretty wasteful of resources. But thanks!!! Sorry it took me so long to respond, I kinda gave up on it and forgot about it :P

From what I gathered, the main reason DeskScapes works is that it passes most of the rendering work to your video card's gpu, meaning that the main system doesn't have to work very hard to provide the animated desktop. It's the same kind of concept that's behind all the other fancy 3D desktop effects out there.

I have no idea if any Linux desktop has developed a similar desktop background system yet. Probably not, as it's just eye-candy and not a high priority for most developers and serious users, which still comprise the majority of Linux users.

Personally, I think I'd probably get sick-and-tired of such animated fluff very quickly. Heck, I'm still using a 2D desktop anyway.

Why do you need this feature?

Who spends time looking at their desktops? People not using their computer. If you arn't using your computer, then a screen saver can just as well play. Solution? Hot key a screen locker that will start your video playing screen saver. Problem Solved.

Like transparent windows?

Have you really thought about this one yet? play a video behind a transparent window and try to read the text. It's going to be more of an eye strain than it is worth.