[Irinikus]

This video shows you how to set up a custom background in IRIX



EDIT: eudatux23 alerted me to the fact that IRIX has supported .jpeg, .gif and .png files natively since version 6.5.22, so there was no need for me to convert the .jpeg’s to .xpm’s, since I’m using version 6.5.30.

I suppose, the part of the video where I converted the .jpegs to .xpm’s can still prove useful to those running versions of IRIX, predating version 6.5.22.

[Noguri]

Thank you for your tutorials!

For a newcomer in SGI world like me, this is more than welcome!

[Irinikus]

Thank you for your tutorials!

For a newcomer in SGI world like me, this is more than welcome!

It's a pleasure, I hope they help.

[stormy]

Thank you for your tutorials!

For a newcomer in SGI world like me, this is more than welcome!

It's a pleasure, I hope they help.

Hi Irinikus, thanks for the tutorial it helped me a lot. Just wondering about how long my single 400mhz octane takes to load the desktop background though, it takes about 5-10 seconds after the desktop has come up. I thought this was odd since we are using the X proper format as advised, it shouldn't be needing to do any conversions in the background surely. My image is 1920x1200. What are your thoughts?

[Irinikus]

It' more than likely a limitation imposed by the graphics hardware you're running.



You have limited amounts of texture memory and suppose the system has to offload the desktop background to system memory, which is obviously slower.

One of my desktop backgrounds in an .xpm format at a resolution of 1920x1080 is 4.1MB in size!

If you're running your screen resolution at 1920x1200, the file will be substantially larger!

[eudatux23]

Since IRIX 6.5.22 you can also use PNG and JPEG as format for the background, this should work better. At least on my machine it works fine.

[Irinikus]

You've got a V12 though, but I do agree that in this case, a .png or .jpeg format would more than likely work better, as they will definitely be smaller.

[stormy]

It was my understanding that no matter whether you use a compressed or uncompressed format, the resulting image in the frame buffer will be about the same size?

[Irinikus]

It was my understanding that no matter whether you use a compressed or uncompressed format, the resulting image in the frame buffer will be about the same size?

Try a .jpeg format to see if it improves.

Myself and eudatux23 are running V12's which have loads of texture memory, as far as these machines go.