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Star Field Plasma Wallpaper 0.4.2
(Plasmoid Binary)
This plasma wallpaper draws an animated starfield in the background of your
desktop. It was inspired by the star field chrome experiment –
www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/starfield/

INSTALLATION
————
Firstly make sure you have the KDE workspace development files installed. For ubuntu run: sudo apt-get install kdebase-workspace-dev

If the source came in a zip then unzip it first. To install run install.sh:
Open up a terminal, navigate to the the starfield directory which has
install.sh then type:

./install.sh

You may be asked for your root password during installation.

After installing log out and then log back in. Then right click on your
desktop, go to ‘Desktop Settings’. Then in wallpaper type you should see
‘Star Field’.

CONTROLS
——–
– Dragging the starfield with the left mouse button will change it position
– Middle clicking on the wallpaper will pause the animation
– Mouse wheel scrolling will change the perspective of the view.

CPU USAGE
———
This wallpaper can be quite CPU intensive. To reduce the CPU usage you may try
the following:
– Pause the wallpaper. This should make the wallpaper use 0% CPU
– Enable ‘Pause when desktop loses focus’ in the advanced options
– Reduce the frames per second. This is THE main factor in deciding the CPU
usage. 15 FPS gives a somewhat smooth animation.
– Reduce number of stars
– Use a blank background (Leave the background path empty)
– Reduce trail length
– Use a lower quality
– Turn off antialiasing
– Use plasma in raster mode. To do this first quit plasma then restart it with
-graphicssystem raster argument:
For KDE 4.2:
kquitapp plasma
plasma -graphicssystem raster

For KDE 4.3:
kquitapp plasma-desktop
plasma -graphicssystem raster

However be warned that this method has not been thoroughly tested.

NOTE: Star speed does not affect CPU usage.

ENJOY!!
——-

changelog:
+ New features
– Removed features
% Changes
* Bugs fixed

v0.4.2 – 20/01/13
* Made wallpaper work on new versions of KDE

v0.4 – 25/08/09
+ Starfield pauses when a window is maximised on the current desktop
+ Added option to pause starfield when desktop loses focus (off by default)
% Reduce initial settings for lower CPU usage
% Large star size is now slightly smaller
* Stars now move smoother in lower speeds
* Zooming is much smoother now

v0.3.1 – 14/07/09
% Tweaked the UI
* Increasing the number of stars no longer crashes Plasma

v0.3 – 12/07/09
+ Added pause option
+ Added star size option
+ Added foreground option
+ Starfield view can now be dragged to move around
+ Added some tooltips and whatsthis to settings dialogs
% Middle click now pauses instead of resetting view
% Changed the look of the configuration window
% Keep basic settings in main configuration window and move
advanced settings to a seperate dialog
* Some drawing bugs fixed. Other plasmoids no longer corrupt the
starfield drawing.
* Preview screen now works better

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