Xsnow does not work

I have installed the old program xsnow with Apt. This program is supposed to make snow (the type of precipitation) appear on the desktop. However, running the program does nothing except return the following code:

Xsnow-1.42resizeable, December 14th 2001 by Rick Jansen ([email protected])
WWW: http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/Xsnow/

This is because the program is designed to draw the snow on the root X window, as stated on the website:

Frequently asked question: I start Xsnow but I don't see any snow? Answer: Xsnow makes it snow on the X-window "root" window. That root window is often obscured by desktop managers, to display icons and tools. So, Xsnow works fine, you just cannot see the snow! See the README for details and possible solutions.

I tried it in an Ubuntu 13.10 VM, Kubuntu 13.10 and 14.04, and a Lubuntu Trusty Live USB. It is working in Xubuntu, because in Xfce we see the root X window by default. In chat, someone reported it working in Ubuntu 12.04, but in my Ubuntu 13.10 VM I don't see snow.

The problem is that, as I mentioned, xsnow draws solely on the root X Window. The root X window is the "parent" of all the other X windows and is therefore also invisible, because modern desktop environments such as KDE and Unity usually hide the root X window with a desktop effects compositor. So xsnow still draws snow, (you can get snatches of it when logging in and out due to graphics fragmentation) it's just not visible. On simpler desktops like Openbox and XFCE, the X window (and thus the snow) are completely visible.

Is there any way to view the root X window activity and thus see the snow?

Using KDE you can use kwin-snow-effect package.

How to install:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ivan-safonov/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kwin-effect-snow

Then in KDE you can set up the effect from System Settings --> Desktop Effects --> All Effects and activate snow.

You can also use the Compiz plugin Snow, Check how it works on this Youtube video

I found xwinwrap, that let you stick any app as your desktop background. Click here to download it, Or here to read to coder's release note

It does not give you access to the root window (which seems difficult on most desktop environments). And this one doesn't work with xsnow but it will work with a lot of other apps...

Just did some more testing on 12.04 ( Likely this is not the answer for 13.10, but for those who want this on 12.04)

If in gnome-tweak-tool, under Desktop I check Have file manager handle the desktop. Then both in Unity and in Unity-2D xsnow works. Altough in unity-2d the snow in the air is invisible, only the fallen are visible, but that's because of my graphic card and its driver. In Unity it works perfectly.

If in gnome-tweak-tool I uncheck Have file manager handle the desktop, then xsnow won't even start and throws an error both in Unity and Unity-2D