The easiest way to change your background in the current
Athena release is through the Gnome Control Center.  You can run the 
Gnome Control Center by clicking on the foot icon on the Gnome panel, 
usually at the lower left corner of your screen, and selecting

  Settings -> GNOME Control Center

You can also run the Gnome Control Center from the command line with the 
command:

  gnome-control-center &

Once you have the Gnome Control Center running, click on "Background",
under "Desktop" in the list on the left side of the window.

On the right side of the window, you will see some pull-down menus and
buttons you can use to select a background color or image. First,
check the box labeled "Use Gnome to set background", to enable this
method of setting the background.

Clicking the "Browse..." button in the "Wallpaper" section will bring
up a window called "Wallpaper Selection", which you can use to pick an
image from your home directory or any other directory you have access
to on Athena. There are also a variety of options for displaying
whatever image you select.

In the "Color" section, you can choose to display a solid color as
your background, or a horizontal or vertical gradient. Any color or
gradient you choose will be displayed under your background image from
the "Wallpaper" section, if there is any space remaining on the
screen. If you don't have a background image, you will just get the
color or gradient by itself.  You can pick the color for a solid
background by clicking on the button to the right of the words
"Primary Color", and if you choose a gradient, you can pick the
secondary color for the gradient by clicking on the button to the
right of the words "Secondary Color".

You may also set your background by a number of older methods; see the
answer on "How to view PICTURES and change BACKGROUNDS" in the "X
WINDOW SYSTEM" section.

Last updated: $Date: 2004/03/08 16:48:49 $