First of all, we’d like to thank everyone who contributed to our contest! Thanks for giving us a choice and for making it a really difficult process to distill all submissions down to a set of 6 amazing looking wallpapers.

As announced at the outset, three members of the Xubuntu development team, namely Pasi Lallinaho (Project Lead), Elizabeth Krumbach (Marketing Lead) and Simon Steinbeiss (Artwork Lead) reviewed the lot of 81 submissions to the contest. In a discussion lasting over two hours, we looked at and discussed all wallpapers in question. It has to be mentioned that one of our criteria was to end up with a diverse set of wallpapers, as in: Xubuntu isn’t only “all blue”.

Today, we would like to present the winners and outline quickly what we like about them or why they were chosen. Without further ado, here’s the winning wallpapers, in alphabetical order:

Balance by Gavin Ash This is one of the more colorful submissions that made it to the group of winners. We’re sure there are many users out there who will appreciate giving their desktop a very relaxed – and balanced – mood, while at the same time having vivid colors. It is also the definite wallpaper for breaks, when you want to dream about the forthcoming summer.

Bubbles by Francisco Villarroel The combination of simplicity and retro-colors caught our eye in this submission. The different ways the light enters the composition and adds various effects and colors makes it pleasant to look at and keeps it interesting, even after having it on your desktop for weeks.

Cloudbreaker by Kayden D’Mello This beautiful mountain-top composition exhibits a very particular color-range, favoring cyan. We fell in love with the texture of the rock and the great composition of the clouds. Finally, we think that this wallpaper makes you feel like you’re at the top of the world – hopefully this can inspire you to reach your goals and more.

Just Rocks by Simon Steinbeiss While Simon, the author and the Artwork Lead, disqualified himself on voting for this photo, we definitely wanted to include it in the package. The photo has a lot of small details to look at, but will efficiently keep out of the way and in the background when you need to focus on other tasks at hand.

Solitude by Gavin Ash This stunning view into a forest contrasts the technology you’re using to get your stuff done with the beautiful experience of nature. While we hope that you will enjoy your time using Xubuntu, maybe this will also inspire you to step out and take a breath of fresh air – something we think this photograph nicely conveys.

Traslasierra by Adrian Felipe Pera This wallpaper features a very balanced sky against a very defined mountain chain glowing in the red light of dawn or dusk (which ever mental image you like better!). What we liked very much about this wallpaper is the vision of looking into the distance, into the great wide open. In addition to all the things mentioned before, this mountainous range works very nicely in a multi-monitor setup.

These wallpapers will be shipped with Xubuntu 14.04. They will also available in the package xubuntu-community-wallpapers in the Ubuntu software repository for those who use other desktops.

The full resolution wallpapers are available for testing already in the Winners for 14.04 wallpaper contest page in the Xubuntu wiki.

Again, congratulations to the winners and thanks for your numerous submissions!