The Warden

We finally got our huge Christmas tree in this year, which means that our house decorations are finally done. That’s great, because now I have time for other important decorations: my Linux box.

Desktop Look

The first thing to do is to get Ubuntu into the Christmas spirit with some great themes and styles. Gnome users have it easy: all you have to do is download and install the Christmas Theme, courtesy of TheeMahn. It is unfortunately a little hard on the eyes (especially the green version), so I wouldn’t do this on a productivity machine. You can also get the Xmas Theme by Keith Hedger. It’s a lot easier on the eyes, but certainly not the most elegant theme in the world. I much prefer Fred McKinney‘s Yulebuntu, a GTK+ style and color theme. The author also includes recommendations for a matching Metacity and icon theme. Emerald users may prefer using Amethyst Plum‘s Christmas Emerald theme (Compiz and Emerald, of course, are required). It has a great holiday feel, and it actually looks nice as well. Speaking of Compiz, you can also get a nice Christmas 3D Desktop Cube (created by Rodolfo Ramone) for your Compiz or Beryl cube. It comes with wallpaper and two awesome-looking skydomes. It was originally meant for Beryl, but you should still be able to tweak it to work with Compiz Fusion.

KDE users have it much easier. They have a beautiful little theme called ChristmasTime (created by Eazy Eazysson), though it’s unfortunately only available for KDE 3.x. It comes with all the standard window decorator, icon, KDM, Kicker, KBFX, and mouse cursor skins, plus a Rainlendar skin and several SuperKaramba skins. The author is hinting that a KDE 4 version might be in the works soon. That could be enough to make me switch back to KDE.

Finally, the wallpaper. There are tons of Christmas wallpapers around, but there aren’t many Linux-specific wallpapers that look great. Good distro-agnostic wallpapers include acryline‘s Christmas Tux and VaeloStudio‘s Christmas Tale. Fedora users will enjoy mola‘s Fedora Christmas, while Ubuntu users will most likely want to download kane77‘s Ubuntu Christmas wallpaper, Patrick‘s Ubuntu Christmas Remake (no relation to kane’s), or acryline‘s Christmas Tux Ubuntu (a remake of the original Christmas Tux with Ubuntu and Debian-specific wallpaper).

Widgets

Now that your desktop looks Christmas-y, it’s time to gear it up with some holiday desktop toys. xsnow is probably the oldest example of this. Created way back in 1984 by Rick Jansen, this is a very simple X Windows app that lets snow fall down on your windows. It’s available in most distributions’ repositories, and is even bundled with a few. Just install it, make sure the root window is shown (see the README for more), and run it. You’ll even get the bonus of seeing Santa go by with his reindeer.

Unfortunately, xsnow was made back in 1984, and many components, especially the graphics, haven’t been updated recently. There’s more elegant solution available: the Snow plugin for Compiz Fusion. It’s currently unsupported, so you’ll most likely have to install an extra package or two to get it (Ubuntu has it in compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported). Enable it in CompizConfig (look in the Extras section), and then launch it with the hotkey (default is Super-F3). Elegant snow will begin to fall. You can also change the snowflakes to any other image you want (for example, hot air balloons) by playing around with the configuration options.

Sometimes, it’s better to have the snow falling during the screensaver. That’s where fuzzyflakes (created, apparently, by Barry Dmytro) comes in. It’s an xscreensaver that comes with the xscreensaver-data package, so it can work with both the Gnome and KDE screensavers as long as they have the xscreenserver backend installed. Enable it, and fuzzy snowflakes come down on a pink background. Perhaps not the most Christmas-y screensaver around, but the closest you can find.

Finally, a little something for the KDE inside of me. I’ve always been a fan of SuperKaramba widgets. If you are too, you’ll love the Christmas Tree SuperKaramba theme by chichovoto. It simply displays a big Christmas tree on your desktop. When you double-click on it, it will play Jingle Bells in xmms or Amarok. It’s probably the least useful app… but it’s fun to show off.

Games

One of the things that happens around Christmas time is that you get lots of fun gifts. These include games. So, why not install a bunch of Christmas games for your Linux system?

If you were hoping for the Wii and failed to receive it, you can attempt to console yourself with SuperTuxKart. Sure, the graphics might not be up to par with the Wii (or the GameCube, DS, Nintendo 64, or possibly even the NES), but it’s basically the same gameplay as the old Mario Kart games. Based on Steve and Oliver Baker‘s original and now defunct TuxKart, SuperTuxKart is a 3D cart racing game starring (you guessed it) Tux the Penguin. There’s even a snow track, hence the snowy Christmas theme lives on.

If SuperTuxKart didn’t cut the Nintendo cake for you, SuperTux will. Believe it or not, it really has no relation to the above SuperTuxKart, except for an overlap in characters (both games feature Tux and his girlfriend Penny). It’s very similar to the classic jump-’n'-bump Super Mario games, but rather than a boring old plumber, SuperTux features, well, the Linux mascot. It’s still a very much work-in-progress, but it’s a fun timekiller.

If you love arcade games but are getting sick of the whole copy-Nintendo theme, Extreme Tux Racer is a great game. It has a long history: it’s the fork of PlanetPenguin Racer, which in turn was a fork of OpenRacer, which in turn was a fork of the commercial (and abandoned) Tux Racer. Despite these complications, Extreme Tux Racer is quite a simple game. You just slide down a hill, eating as many herrings as possible.

If you’re just plain sick of the entire arcade game idea, you might be more interested in a real time strategy game. Joey Marshall‘s SnowballZ is the perfect Christmas-y answer. The concept is great: just have your penguins collect lots of fish to feed your army without getting killed by enemy snowball-throwing penguins. Sounds simple? Ha! Think again. And once you discover the LAN, you won’t be able to stop.

Note: the author is not responsible for lost jobs, angry spouses, or any other damage incurred by the above game.

If you like using your brain, it might be time for some puzzles. Look no farther than Guillaume Cottenceau’s Frozen Bubble, one of the most ultimate puzzle games ever. Simply shoot colored balls (using, of course, penguins as your operator) at similarily colored balls. Putting like colors with like colors will cause all contigious colors to drop. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds. And yes, this is even more addicting than SnowballZ.

Of course, if you’re really feeling brainy, there’s nothing better than science to satisfy you. That’s where Snowflake comes in. Created by Don Johnson (from security pioneer Raph Levien’s original idea), this program, originally a cryptography exercise, generates unique snowflakes using bit patterns from ASCII strings. It’s very nifty, even if you’re not a security freak. Please note that Don’s page has since had technical issues, and you’re better off trying to look for Snowflake in your distro’s repository.

Now that your brain is fried with penguins, bubbles, and snowflakes, it’s time for a little relaxation. My favorite method of relaxation is playing a good old first-person shooter, and I can’t think of any better Linux-based shooter than Wolfenstein: Enemy Terroritory. And for Christmas, the perfect map is North Pole, created by Rikard Lindgren and “Loffy”. The Allies’ mission is to defend the “Christmas Star”, a symbol of hope and joy, from the Axis invaders. You’ll see Santa, reindeer, and, of course, the North Pole. Awesomeness.