I'm trying to get an xscreensaver to run as my desktop background / wallpaper using the method described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XScreenSaver#Animated_wallpaper and the first step is killing the process that controls the root X window, but I have no idea what process that is.Ideally I'd like to learn how to obtain the name of this program myself [incidentally ps aux | grep root doesn't really help] and from there figure out how to stop this program from starting at boot or asserting control of the root X window.However, anyone who knows offhand what program this would be in Cinnamon can help me solve the problem and naturally any additional information about stopping / disabling this program or starting / enabling /usr/lib/xscrensaver/glmatrix -root would also be appreciated.
How can I find which process is controlling the root window?
x11;xorg;cinnamon;window manager;xinit
The root Window is a special Window of the X server. It doesn't have an associated application.The wiki improperly refers to the root window here. What they meant is a Window that masks/hides the root Window like typically found in modern desktop environments (usually referred to as the Desktop, and often implemented by a file manager showing you the content of a ~/Desktop folder).Those xscreensaver widgets actually work by updating the content of the root Window. So you need to remove that Desktop window that would hide it and any other Window that is displayed on top of the root window.What you could try looking for is the process id of the windows that register a Window Type of Desktop with the window manager. You could do something like:xwininfo -tree -root |  pcregrep -o '^\s+\K0x\S+' |  xargs -n1 xwininfo -wm -id |  pcregrep -Mo '(?s)Window type:\s+Desktop.*?Process id: \K\d+' |  sort -u(xwininfo -tree to list all the windows,  the first pcregrep to extract their window id, the second xwininfo to retrieve the WM properties (including Window type and pid) of each and then the second pcregrep to extract the PID of those Desktop windows).You could also run:xprop _NET_WM_PIDAnd click on the desktop. Or even:xkillAnd click on the desktop to kill that window.In any case, note that it may not be safe to kill that window/process as it may very well be handled by some essential process like the window manager.In the case of cinnamon, at least on a default desktop environment on Linux mint 18.1 cinnamon edition, it seems to be nemo though (the cinnamon file manager), so there's little harm killing it.