Haven't set up my kde desktop yet, so default from install for now. My "other" os uses a totally black background (how often do I see any part of my de? only for a few seconds, before that the os had a folder of images downloaded from nasa of stars and other galactic images

I historically have looked for pictures that have a lot of visual depth, like a cityscape or a vista or the ocean or landscape something. It needs to be pleasant to look at and complex but not too busy. I also like there to be a range of emotions that I can feel from it, so that I'm not locked into anything depressing. Generally, the only times I see my wallpaper are when I'm overwhelmed and minimize/close everything, I'm looking for a reset, or on a phonecall and I'm thinking without doing anything else simultaneously.

An added bonus is symmetry, either a vertical line or horizontal, or multiple. Even more bonus is if it's natural AND aligned with the orientation (the picture not just being taken askew of a thing that is symmetrical). So that I can drag the selector with my mouse and make shapes. I know I'm not the only person that does this.

Oh also, brought sunlight and cool colors I find better. Nothing dark and broody or monotone, as those get old super fast. Imperial Boy (an artist) is close, but often either not detailed enough, or too gut wrenchingly melancholy for my sanity, or even not deep enough. Like imagine looking at a picture of a campfire vs being able to stare at an actual campfire. One of those is significantly more pensive.

I'll stick with these for years until I have a need to change, like from a serious life event.

Reading the other comments is wild. Everybody's so interesting and different. The people who are like, "i like this very specific shade of grey" i can't help but let my imagination run. You're either military or like a million of the same exact grey outfits with the same daily routine and the Up! music is playing.

I cannot share them because I ain't letting there be any chance of my favorite online artist know, but for a while I have been using a few of my favorites of his work in a background slideshow that changes every five minutes. It's wholesome furry art.

Before that, I was using wallpapers done from the guy who does the Pepper & Carrot webcomic. Then before that, I used a screenshot from a music video and had copies where all I did was open them up in Krita and change the colours around .

That's for my laptop.

For my desktop, my final and only windows device ( still running 10 but I'm moving it to an SSD and removing internet access so I can switch to mint most likely because of my dad making the switch scarely enough ), I currently have a lot of Tails fanart off of Pixiv I have running as a slideshow.

Before that, I used some images like a random Sly Cooper image I found or this fantastic image of the 2 main characters of the webcomic Peter & Company chilling under a tree as Peter plays on his switch and his guardian angel reads a book. Pretty normal furry stuff, I guess

I almost never use OS default backgrounds besides right now in a couple VMs I have to do some college work.

I prefer to use a photo I took and then build the rest of the desktop theme around it. Then again you end up looking at the desktop very little so it doesn't matter too much.

I also run KDE. Living room PC I'm using:

https://github.com/y4my4my4m/kde-shader-wallpaper

https://godotshaders.com/shader/balatro-background-shader/

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XXtBRr

I really like the Balatro shader. This plugin is awesome eye candy and stable, highly recommend.

Desktop PC has three monitors, two are just static Images from Wallhaven. Primary is using another KDE plugin that reuses Wallpaper Engine themes I'm subscribed to via Steam back when I used Windows... somewhat. Don't recommend because it's prone to crashing when a theme is incompatible and you have to edit a config file to remove the broken paper entry to get your taskbar responsive again. I trial and errored until I just had a handful of my old favourites that work.

https://github.com/catsout/wallpaper-engine-kde-plugin

https://wallhaven.cc/

Animated: https://vidplay.io/stream/jmS-NRCQpClo6vdGe8N84A

Poorly cropped (by me) manga screencaps mostly. Some silly pictures and landscapes here and there too

I have a photo of the outdoors somewhere. I change jt everybfew months to keep up with the season

I have never really used wallpapers. I have always used an all black screen.

Now screen savers/locked screen images, I have numerous pictures I use of Star Wars things, mmy vacation photos etc.

Almost-black solid color wallpaper, made it myself (IIRC I just screenshotted from some tool that displays colors after you enter a six digit hex value). It looks neat.

Work computer or any windows machine: black. I have zero interest in wallpapers.

My home computer and my work from home computer are all KDE and I really like the slowly changing patterns ones. I should try and figure out how to make those, preferably in mostly dark and out of the way colors.

Why do people set wallpapers? When you are at the computer dont you use it for something? Why would you want a distracting wall paper in the way?

I've got a small handful of random wallpapers I've collected over the years, but I'm really picky and almost always end up going with the stock wallpapers. I'm on Debian 13 and I've been using this one since Debian 11.

I use green.

every system is different. landscapes, textures, shots from tv or movies, people.... only one is using 'defaults', the wp from the 'sunrise' win11 theme (was set to that for some screen caps and recording, to avoid any.. uh.. 'issues'.. over having copyrighted imagery in them--it was a still from one of the lego movies). my phone is anna and elsa and will always be anna and elsa. dunno why. it just is.

As pixel density has improved, I’ve gravitated toward highly detailed cityscapes. Like photos of Manhattan or Singapore or Tokyo (as examples). They just look so cool with tiny pixels.

50% grey solid color. I SO do not care about my desktop background, and whenever I see one of these "beauuutiful" pictures I become a bit annoyed.

I use 3 of the "daily background" sources from KDE Plasma (one from NASA, and two artsy ones, one for each display). Unfortunately they don't seem to have a lot of variety. Well, besides the NASA one.

I run custom backgrounds.

I have Wallpaper Engine on Steam. My current wallpaper is a 1980s synthwave style animation of the big kalua mountain thingy.

my background is an edit of that one prince meme where it says "You can always discuss your wages, it's always legally correct" after my boss told us not to discuss our wages in a meeting. I raised hell in the group chat until I got her to admit, in text, that she legally cannot stop us.

It varies, right now I've got outdoor photos I took on my work computer and phone, and a game screenshot on my home computer.

I found a bunch of 4k dark wallpapers and rotate them out occasionally with a script I wrote.

I use a custom wallpaper. It’s a screenshot of Miller from The Expanse because he is my favorite character. My screensaver images are also from The Expanse.