I was wondering to know from everyone. If the choice in desktop background is important? and How do you make that choice what sways you one way or the other.
Thank you for being such a wonderfully welcoming community
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For me, wallpaper both reflects and effects (cyclical sourcing) my mood. If I want to get work done, I lean towards a pretty simple non-distracting photo or pattern.
Its probably about as important as the material lining the seats in your car. They set the tone, mood, and attitude of your automobile. The seat material contributes slightly to the comfort of the seat, but the foam and seat constitution are really what make up the bulk of comfort. After you are seated and driving, you cant really see the seat material (as you can’t really see your wallpaper while you’ve got the desktop full of windows), but it IS the first and last thing you see when you enter or exit your vehicle.
Sooooo… in this analogy, I view the wallpapers that change from light to dark through out the day as I view heated and cooled seats. I’ve gotten along fine all these years without it… but MAN, when you have 'em, you really enjoy them. 
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Yes it’s important. For me I tend to choose dark wallpaper, with a dark theme easy on my old eyes!
I like some Darker Rainbow stuff from time to time as well.
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For me, the wallpaper, theming and icons has less than zero relevance in my choice of distro or DE. I couldn’t care less, because I always spend time customizing it to my needs and desires. I have yet to come across a distro that “tickles my fancy” when it comes to themes and colors. And I have tried a lot of them out there.
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I like something scenic like a beach or mountain theme, perhaps a waterfall. What I really like, when I can find it, is a pic that appears to be a path like one is walking towards the scene. Or, a good pic that looks like you are sitting at a private beach. I don’t care for pics with other people in it.
However, for the login and lock splash screens, I tend to use something with a linux theme.
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It’s not that important to me in choosing a distro because I tend to cycle through my large collection anyway. But as @jastombaugh said it’s part of the first impression and on some occasions it was part of the reasons why I wanted to test some distros. Like Salient KDE that has a gorgeous base setup and wallpapers.
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The wallpaper that comes with a distro or desktop environment has no importance to me and laughable when it is rated in a review. Same with the Icons, Cursors, Sounds or Themes. Everything is customizable and you can make it all look as you want. One of the reasons we choose GNU/Linux over Windows or MacOS. I don’t even see my wallpaper, so it is even less important than it all for me.
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Agreed, except for the login and lock splash screens.
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Perhaps I did not understand your reply, but the login and splash screens call all be changed as well.
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The openSUSE Tumbleweed default wallpaper is absolutely perfect, in my eyes for what a good wallpaper should be for someone that pretends to be professional…like me.
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Sorry, I should have quoted what my reply was in response to.
The login and lock splash screens are the only wallpaper we normally see. And, yes, I always change those to my liking.
The thoughts in my head always make sense to me (sometimes only me).
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This is true, about the login/lock screen. Also about the thoughts in your head and mine. I am guilty of knowing specifically what I am replying, yet not being specific in the reply.
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It’s a mix of super important and not important at all for me, it’s kind of hippy-ish but I go with the feel of the desktop.
A lot of the time I have plain colours, usually slightly off-shade from my bars and widgets like dark grey bars and a slightly lighter grey wallpaper for example.
Randomly I setup a desktop and feel like it needs a certain wallpaper to be complete, I’ll spend hours finding just the right one and even cracking out the gimp to tweak one that’s close.
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