WIDGET BUILDER

Pretty wallpaper is fine as far as it goes, but if you want desktop frills that actually do work for you, such as displaying weather reports or monitoring system data, you’ll need a tool like SuperKaramba. SuperKaramba [1] is a KDE-based tool that lets you create helpful widgets for your desktop. The SuperKaramba website refers to these interactive widgets as “custom eye candy,” but SuperKaramba applets are more commonly called themes. You’ll find many pre-built SuperKaramba themes on the Internet, but you can also create your own themes. A SuperKaramba theme can take the form of a game, a system monitor, a desktop music directory, or even a custom toolbar. Previous articles in Linux Magazine described how to get started with SuperKaramba. For additional information, see [2]. (These articles are currently available through Linux Magazine’s convenient online archive.) This article is a brief workshop on how to create your own SuperKaramba theme.