Ubuntu – Prevent users from changing the desktop background on Ubuntu 18.04

18.04userswallpaper

How can I prevent users from changing the desktop wallpaper on Ubuntu 18.04?

Best Answer

You can't prevent users from changing your desktop background without preventing your own account from making a change. If they are using your account, they have the same access that you have.

Solution 1:

Give them their own separate login ID. This way your environment will never be affected their settings.

Solution 2:

Activate a script that will check for a change and periodically change it back to your preferred background.

You can find an example of such a script in this answer:
How can I get one wallpaper for each day of the week?

Instead of having the script change daily, just have it periodically set the background to your choice.

eog (eye-of-gnome)

11.04 and previous versions of ubuntu

When you mentioned that you can right-click an image and set as wallpaper, this answer assumes you meant - open the jpeg image into eog, right-click and choose "set as desktop background".

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With this answer, you can remove this option:

enter image description here

With this assumption in mind, you can remove the menu-option AND right-click option by either editing the source directly (if you want to distribute a package) or on a per-client modify the GTK window data.

solution 1 - edit GTK window data

First backup the GTK window data:

sudo cp /usr/share/eog/eog-ui.xml ~/
gksudo gedit /usr/share/eog/eog-ui.xml

Now search for "wallpaper" - delete each line that contains this keyword and save.

To revert the changes:

sudo cp ~/eog-ui.xml /usr/share/eog

solution 2 - distribute deb package

This can be done with this recipe:

apt-get source eog
sudo apt-get build-dep eog
sudo apt-get install devscripts

If it asks to configure your mail - select no configuration

cd eog-2*/data
gedit eog-ui.xml

Now search for "wallpaper" - delete each line that contains this keyword.

Save.

cd ..
gedit debian/changelog

add +ppakarthick to the first line so that it reads something like:

eog (2.32.1-0ubuntu2+ppakarthick) natty; urgency=low

debuild -us -uc
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i eog_*.deb

Note - there is only one deb package to install - either 32bit or 64bit depending upon the ubuntu architecture you have installed. The other deb's produce is a debug package and a development package, both of which you can ignore.

To revert the changes:

sudo apt-get purge eog
sudo apt-get install eog

This will remove the complete eog package. Then, the second command will re-download from the repositories, the current eog package.

Note - it may want to remove the meta package ubuntu-desktop. The only affect this has is if you intend to upgrade to Natty. If you want to upgrade, simply install ubuntu-desktop before the upgrade.

Gnome-Control-Center background tab

The GTK Window data for this tab is in the file /usr/share/gnome-control-center/ui/appearance.ui but I have not found a convenient place in this file that you can hide the background tab itself.

enter image description here

With a source-code change - you can get the background tab and its buttons to both not display wallpaper and do nothing when the buttons are clicked.

This solution is very similar to solution 2 above.

apt-get source gnome-control-center
sudo apt-get build-dep gnome-control-center
sudo apt-get install devscripts

If it asks to configure your mail - select no configuration

cd gnome*/capplets/appearance
gedit appearance-desktop.c

Now look for the following function and add return; as shown:

void
desktop_init (AppearanceData *data,
          const gchar **uris)
{
  GtkWidget *add_button, *w;
  GtkCellRenderer *cr;
  char *url;

  data->wp_update_gconf = TRUE;

  data->wp_uris = NULL;

  return;

Save.

cd ../..
gedit debian/changelog

add +ppakarthick to the first line so that it reads something like:

gnome-control-center (1:2.30.1-0ubuntu2+ppakarthick) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

debuild -us -uc
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i capplets*.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgnome-window-settings1*.deb
sudo dpkg -i gnome-control-center_*.deb

To revert the changes:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-control-center libgnome-window-settings1 capplets-data
sudo apt-get install ubuntu_desktop

This will remove the complete gnome-control-center package and a few other packages. Then, the second command will re-download from the repositories, all the packages previously removed.

Ubuntu – How to disable changing desktop background (wallpapers) automatically in Ubuntu 12.04

When you right click on your desktop and select "Change My Desktop Background" (alternatively type "Appearance" in the Dash). You will see little Icons on some of the wallpaper selections.

These represent the slideshow you want to remove. Select an alternative Wallpaper (with no icon) and this effect will be removed. See my comments above if you want to add your own wallpaper.

For additional information the dynamic wallpaper slideshow wallpapers are driven by the contest.xml file hosted in usr/share,backgrounds

Best Answer

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Related Solutions

How to Restrict Users from Changing Their Wallpapers

eog (eye-of-gnome)

Gnome-Control-Center background tab

Ubuntu – How to disable changing desktop background (wallpapers) automatically in Ubuntu 12.04

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