Cute little penguins walking around your desktop
XPenguins is a fun desktop animation that displays cute little penguins (and other characters) walking, falling, and climbing around your windows and desktop. If you drag windows over them, they might get squashed!
This project contains two versions:
- GNOME Shell Extension - For GNOME Desktop users
- Cinnamon Extension - For Linux Mint/Cinnamon Desktop users
- 🐧 Animated characters walking on your desktop and windows
- 🎨 Multiple themes (Penguins, Turtles, Bill, and more)
- 🖱️ God mode - click to squash toons!
- 🪟 Window mode - run in a specific window
- 📊 Load averaging - automatically reduce toons under high system load
- 🩸 Optional blood effects and angel animations
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/lggcs/xpenguins.git
cd xpenguins-gnome-shell-extension
# Build (optional, if Makefile is present)
make
# Install
cp -r xpenguins@mathematical.coffee.gmail.com ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
# Enable
gnome-extensions enable xpenguins@mathematical.coffee.gmail.com# Navigate to cinnamon extension folder
cd cinnamon-extension
# Copy to Cinnamon extensions directory
cp -r xpenguins@cinnamon.org ~/.local/share/cinnamon/extensions/Access the configuration through the system menu:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Run in a particular window | Click "Running in:" and choose which window the toons should run around in |
| Theme | Select which character themes to use (Penguins, Big Penguins, Turtles, Bill, etc.) |
| Ignore popups | Whether popup windows are considered solid to the toons |
| Ignore maximised windows | Whether toons ignore maximised windows (useful if you always have maximised windows) |
| Always on visible workspace | Whether toons follow you across workspaces |
| Blood | Enable blood effects (squash animations) |
| Angels | Show penguin angels floating up after dying |
| God mode | Click on toons to squash them! |
| Time between frames | Animation speed (default: theme-specified, usually 60ms) |
| Load Averaging | Automatically kill toons when system load is high |
- Penguins - Classic XPenguins characters
- Big Penguins - Larger penguin variants
- Classic Penguins - Original style penguins
- Turtles - Turtle characters
- Bill - Bill the character
- Dual monitors with different sizes: Toons may walk in invisible areas
- GNOME Shell menus: The message tray and GNOME popups are not treated as solid objects
- Initial flicker: When starting XPenguins or adding new toons, there may be a brief flicker
- Original XPenguins: Robin Hogan - xpenguins.seul.org
- GNOME Shell Extension: mathematical.coffee - mathematical.coffee@gmail.com
- Cinnamon Extension: Community port
This project is open source. See the LICENSE file for details.
Found a bug? Have a feature request?
- Check the Issues page
- Report with:
- Your GNOME Shell / Cinnamon version
- Extension version (from
metadata.json) - Steps to reproduce
- Any errors from
journalctl -f | grep -i xpenguins
Enjoy your desktop companions! 🐧