Variety automatic wallpaper changer has reached the 0.5 release a few hours ago. Here’s what’s new and how to install it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu 12.04

For those who have never heard of Variety, see the below description from the launchpad page

Variety changes the desktop wallpaper on a regular basis, using user-specified or automatically downloaded images.

Variety sits conveniently as an indicator in the panel and can be easily paused and resumed. The mouse wheel can be used to scroll wallpapers back and forth until you find the perfect one for your current mood.

Apart from displaying images from local folders, several different online sources can be used to fetch wallpapers according to user-specified criteria.

Variety can also automatically apply various fancy filters to the displayed images – charcoal painting, oil painting, heavy blurring, etc. – so that your desktop is always fresh and unique. Applying a heavy blurring filter for example is a great way to get abstract-looking and unobtrusive, yet colorful wallpapers, similar in spirit to the default one in Ubuntu.

Video Demo:

Release Highlights of the v0.5:

• Added Reddit support
• Show Next and Previous in main menu only in non-Unity DEs (Unity supports indicator scroll, no need for them there)
• Adding Wallhaven.cc support
• More details at launchpad.net/variety/trunk/0.5.0

Install / Upgrade Variety in Ubuntu:

The packages have been made into the official PPA, available for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, Linux Mint and derivatives.

To add the PPA and install the software, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peterlevi/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install variety

Don’t want to add PPA? Download the package “variety_0.5.0_all.deb” at:

Download Variety .deb Package

Once downloaded, click to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and finally install the software.

NOTE: if you have a previous version installed, you need to remove the config files under user’s “.config/variety” folder (press Ctrl+H to view hidden folders) to use Wallhaven.cc instead of Wallbase.cc.