First of all to setup the directory to read the images go to your home directory and create/edit file .xscreensaver like the one below:

imageDirectory: /home/username/Pictures/Slideshow/or/wherever

This sets up your screensavers that are using images, to use this directory instead of  /usr/share/backgrounds (the default directory). Some people on the internet tells you to symlink it to your directory, but I think this is a far better way of doing it.

If you read the glslideshow manual (RTFM), it tells you that by default glslideshow pans an image for 6 seconds (Ken Burns/Pan Scale effect) and displays it for 30 seconds. This means that the glslideshow will idiotically display the same image 5 times. (30/6=5)

In order to fix this issue, you will need to tell it to pan it n seconds and display it also n seconds. So the command should be:

/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glslideshow -root -pan 6 -duration 6

(-root means display on the root window which is the way screensavers work)

The configuration for this resides at: /usr/share/applications/screensavers/glslideshow.desktop

Go ahead and edit that file as root and change the line that reads:

Exec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glslideshow -root

to

Exec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glslideshow -root -pan 6 -duration 6

Now you are ready to have a slideshow that displays with pan/scale each image for 6 seconds.

And it all doesn’t work…

This is where the shit hit the fan for me. No matter what I did, my glslideshow was still running as /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glslideshow -root (ps aux | grep glslideshow)

After a stubborn and painful few hours I discovered that these settings were being cached in a file called: /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache (This is WTF number one)

If you look at this file, it’s a 56 KB cache file of all the settings gnome is reading for all of it’s applications!! I guess it should have been setup to delete it on restart but for some reason it never got deleted…

After renaming this file (never delete them, always rename them ) the slideshow started to run as I wanted it to be.