An international background

To set a background in X Window, most of the time you will use XV or a similar program to set a static image. But there is a program out there that allows you to put something useful on your background.

Xearth, available from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~tuna/xearth/index.html, is a program that will display a map of the world on your background, with some useful information. The main use is to display where the sun currently lights the planet. It will also display the current time, and stars in the sky if you want to.

Several options exist. By default, Xearth will show a round planet, but you can make it display a rectangular map:

xearth -proj merc

Other options are available, including mono display, the number of colors, and the running priority.