Flickr user eddybelluci laboured over this desktop, making it just right for his needs and perfectly suited to his widescreen display. The end result looks great — feeds, weather and notifications on the left, time, date, music controls and quick access to apps on the right, and work in the centre. We like.
It’s definitely a little busy, but if you have a large, wide display, there’s plenty of room for everything. Want the same look for your Windows desktop? Here’s how to make it happen:
- The wood-panelled wallpaper from Wallbase
- The Rainmeter system management and configuration tool for Windows
- The Enigma skin for Rainmeter to create the sidebar on the left
- The xClock add-on for Rainmeter to create the large system clock on the right
- The All-in-One Player for Rainmeter to control the music from the desktop
- The Gnometer skin for Rainmeter to create the Wi-Fi, battery, gmail, µTorrent and Word of the Day status widgets on the right side of the screen
- The Omnimo skin for Rainmeter for the sleep/restart/lock/hibernate buttons in the lower right
- The Google Bar for Rainmeter for the search bar in the upper right
- RocketDock for the application launcher at the bottom of the screen
- The Cupo skin for Rocketdock to customise and centre the dock
- The Variations icon packs and Flurry icon sets to replace the default system icons
- The Leaf visual style for Windows 7 to darken Aero a bit and give the glass a smoky, tinted look
- The Red Ribbon Start Orb to replace the Windows Start button
There are a lot of components, but thankfully you can pick and choose among them to create as much or as little of the overall look as you like. Eddybelluci mentioned that he did have to tweak the fonts in most of the plugins to make sure the look was the same across all of them, but aside from that most of it was easy to install. Still need a little help? Check out our guide to setting up Rainmeter or drop by eddybelluci’s Flickr page to ask a question, or to just let him know how much you like his desktop!
Mac users can get some (but obviously not all) of this action with GeekTool and our getting started guide to using it. If you’re a Linux user, the Conky system utility and some shell themes can get you most, if not all of the way there.
Red Ribbons and Wood Desktop [Flickr]
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