Dhertz/Ubuntu_Aerial.md

## Ubuntu_Aerial.md

      
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              Ubuntu_Aerial.md
            
          
    Using Apple’s Aerial Screensavers on Ubuntu After coming across the [Aerial]
(https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial) screensavers for Mac, and installing
them, I decided that I had had enough of the graphics-demos of my Ubuntu
Precise system. I hope to provide a simple guide on how to add them to your
setup as well.
First, you need to install xscreensaver (for example with aptitude, but your
distro should have it):
sudo aptitude install xscreensaver
and the latest version of mpv (you must use the latest version, see
here for a list of repos for various package managers:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install mpv
Then, we need to go and actually get the videos that Apple uses as
screensavers. I wanted to do this regularly as they may add more locations
or videos, so I wrote a hacky script that checks the server to see if there
are any videos that I do not have on disk and download them:
#!/usr/bin/python

import json
import os
import requests
import sys

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
  print("Usage: %s <folder to save videos to>" % (sys.argv[0]))
  sys.exit(1)

downloadDir = sys.argv[1]

if downloadDir[-1] != '/':
  downloadDir += '/'

response = requests.get("http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/000/" +
     "Features/atv/AutumnResources/videos/entries.json")

screensavers = json.loads(response.text)
for screensaver in screensavers:
  for asset in screensaver['assets']:
    filename = downloadDir + asset['id'] + ".mov"
    if not os.path.isfile(filename):
      print("Downloading %s" % (asset['url'],))
      film = requests.get(asset['url'], stream=True)
      with open (filename, "wb") as filmFile:
        print("Writing %s to %s" % (asset['id'], filename))
        for chunk in film.iter_content(chunk_size=1024):
          if chunk:
            filmFile.write(chunk)
and then I set it to be run every day at 2:16am by adding this to my crontab
(run crontab -e):
16 02 * * * /home/dhertz/screensavers/get_screensavers.py /home/dhertz/screensavers

You will want to replace where you saved the script and the folder where you
wish to save the videos as appropriate.
Finally, I added this to my .xscreensaver (which by default is in your home
directory - if it is not there start xscreensaver), after all of the other
screensaver options (at the end of the big list of names with lines that end
with \n\)
 Best:         "Apple Aerial"   mpv --really-quiet --shuffle --no-audio       \
                                  --fs --loop=inf --no-stop-screensaver       \
                                  --wid=$XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW --panscan=1      \
                                  $HOME/screensavers/*                      \n\

and selected "Only One Screen Saver", "Apple Aerial" and to Cycle After 0
minutes in the xscreensaver-demo:


## xscreensaver-demo.png

      
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              xscreensaver-demo.png