It’s called Mascopix, and it can be downloaded from this web site or if you are using Ubuntu or an Ubuntu derivative you can find it in the Universe repository. At the moment I’m using the ultralight LXDE desktop on a Lubuntu re-spin called LXLE. It’s minimal and plenty fast, but it needs a little eye candy to make it nice looking and – I admit it – a little bit playful for the kid in me. So besides the screenlets I described in a prior post, I’ve added this cutesy little animated “window sitter:”
The big picture:
She blinks her eyes, sips a drink, or folds and unfolds her arms while looking out at me from her perch atop an open application window. Installed from the Ubuntu Universe repositories, Macopix is still incomplete. In addition to installing the package, the user has to download the “mascots” and configuration options from the web site in the form of a tarball. The good news is that the user doesn’t have to unpack the tarball, only “point to it” and let Mascopix automagically unpack and install them. There are dozens of mascots to choose from too!
I removed the Conky applet that ships with LXLE because it was too small for my old eyes to see without glasses and a couple of attempts to change the font size and other settings – even with directions from a forum thread – fell frustratingly short of expectations. And if I want a conky-like screenlet to tell me about RAM and CPU useage and stuff I can add it to my other screenlets without having to figure out Conky. But I sincerely doubt that my little “window sitter” uses much in the way of system resources. There has been absolutely no loss of speed or system responsiveness with this playful addition to my Linux desktop.
Robin's Rants and Raves 