I don't understand the question. Are you dropping the screensavers or are you getting new ones?

I use KDE3/Trinity so I don't think it would affect me, but I think it's a bad idea because I just read a whole long thread in which people complain bitterly about the loss of xscreensaver in Gnome 3, and just the fact that Gnome is doing it seems like reason enough for KDE not to do it.

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/has-gno ... en-savers/

Apparently the Gnome 3 party line is that if you want something more visually pleasing than "lock your screen and power off the monitor", you are wanting something that is Wrong.


Is this really true? Because it sounds too crazy to be true, even for Gnome.

Obviously I think that gnome-screensaver shouldn't have been written in the first place, but the idea that they are shipping what purports to be a complete desktop system, and it can't run screen savers at all is just... bafflingly nutty.

I love Xscreensaver. It's the first thing that I ever saw in Linux that was cooler than anything I had ever seen in Windows. I don't always use it, but over the years, it's often handed me a sweet visual surprise. Read the thread and you'll find some pretty practical; reason why people still find screensavers useful.

As a KDE3 user, my way of responding would be to NOT change desktop environments.

blackbelt_jones wrote:I don't understand the question. Are you dropping the screensavers or are you getting new ones?

That's what the poll is about. The proposed framework would allow new screensavers (written in the Quick framework), but would be backwards-incompatible with the old xscreensaver framework. They are testing the waters to see what kind of backlash there will be if they did just scrape the old x screen savers. My hope is that the best of the old screen savers will be ported to the new framework as well as many newer, better screen savers written.

Thank goodness! You left off an "It's about time" option, ha, ha!
Seriously, I think screen savers should be of minimal focus to developers. Let those in the user-base passionate about them create them. Why not? I wish the dev's would focus more on some of the more core aspects of the desktop.

Not read all this post and it was too late to vote. Just putting my 2 pence in FWIW.

I've always like the integration of KDE from apps to desktop and everything else. Not complaining if XScreesaver has to be dumped for whatever reason, I'm sure KDE developers will come up with something awesome as usual.

XScreensaver probably has the most secure locking mechanism from reading all about it on the home page, a lot of thought has gone in to it even if it does look somewhat ugly compared to new toolkits but there's reasoning for that and that has been explained there too, apparently KDE and Gnome have it all wrong regarding locking when working with XScreensaver.

XScreensaver has so many hacks and with rss-glx there are even more OpenGL savers. Why lose all these nice looking savers and start from scratch?

Something that I always thought would be possible in KDE4 and really cool is to be able have any X11 window (including savers) as a background/wallpaper. This was possible in KDE3 I think somehow?

Sorry for the random burbling just wondering why XScreensaver has to be dumped. Maybe I should read all the replies to this poll.

gavlee wrote:Sorry for the random burbling just wondering why XScreensaver has to be dumped. Maybe I should read all the replies to this poll.

Basically implementing the compositor improves security. "This is currently related to the new screen locker. The new screen locker is implemented in the compositor to ensure that the screen is always blanked (something the old one could not guarantee)."

If you're interested you should read Martin's blog posts:
Power Saving and Desktop Effects (paragraph under "Where we enforce Compositing")
New Screen Locker
Results from poll about future of XScreensavers in KDE Plasma

Hans wrote:If you're interested you should read Martin's blog posts:
----8<----

I did just that, I remember skimming through it at some point from a feed but didn't know that much about it, I dug out the feeds from the planet through Akregator after I posted. Sorry for the noise.

Thanks Hans

Programs like mplayer detect for and disable then X screensaver while playback. Can you please maintain this compatibility if possible.

My vote however is for "I don't use screen savers, it doesn't affect me"

I dont use screensavers as they do not have purpose these days.

As the purpose of screensaver was to animate the image on CRT display so it would not be needed turn off and the image did not burn on it in use. And those times laptops were not common where people turn them sleep by closing lid.

LCD displays does not suffer some problem and it is only a cosmetic thing.

Today I use just blank screen or I put computer at sleep with a button. It wakes up in few seconds and when computer sleeps, every other electronic device loose power (I have special powerplug what shutdows every other plug expect PC case).

And these days, I really hope people would start making new screensavers for those who want to use them. Porting some of the existing should not be impossible or hard, but actually generating something new than just those 90's 3D effects....

Only thing what I demand is that the screensaver is possible to maintain later

There is only one screen saver that I really want or use: a good slide show. My hobby is photography, and seeing my photos in the slide show is a joy. However, the current slide show has such intricate transitions that they take a long time, and the "slide show" actually ends up becoming a showcase for the transitions, which annoyingly slice and dice my photos. I now put on my Windows laptop when I want to see a slide show of my photos. If you are redoing the screen savers, a slide show in which you can turn off transitions would be most welcome.

Although their original purpose of preventing image burn-in is no longer an issue with modern LCD screens, ignoring the fact that a screen can serve multiple purposes is not paying much attention to your users. A good slide show screen saver is of interest to me, but for others a modernization of the visual effects might be an attractive option, such as:

• A random sampling of your social networking friends pages or posts
• A tour of news items that fit the categories and source sites that you can specify as preferences
• A daily summary of report information, in a list, table, or chart on data as diverse as stats for your web site(s), stock market summaries, stock performances, stats on daily use of the internet, stats on browser usage or server software, etc.
• YouTube videos that fit the categories that you specify as preferences
• Your favourite fly-throughs in GoogleEarth or a display of your latest 3D movies or scenes
• Some other kick-ass application that only someone with an ingenious imagination could come up with instead of being brain-locked on resenting screen savers as being dying holdovers of yesterday's limited technologies

Whatever service or features you provide, no matter how ancient they may come to seem, someone will complain if you simply kill it off. Evolving it into some imaginative alternative, however, is the stuff of superior minds.

It was good to enable Screen saver once you don't use you PC for a while. But if you don't use your PC it means you don't watch into the screen. And if you don't look at your monitor what a sense to keep it On?

My monitor goes into power saving mode in 5 minutes of idling. So I'm not interested in screensaver.

I know it sound silly, but I let the screensavers running on my monitor.
I would try to have a solution to be able to run X screensavers if desired, with the warning regarding the security issues.
Couldn't be made a desktop effect to play them?

I too missed the vote. Personally, I use the slideshow screensaver I'd miss it. Since the 2nd highest vote was for screensavers perhaps at least that one is worth keeping.
However if it comes down to it I can do this:
1. right click anywhere select Desktop Settings
2.for Wallpaper select from the drop down menu Slideshow
3.Select a custom folder or use the system wallpapers
4.click Apply then OK
The whole desktop changes every 10 sec. Then I could just go & turn off the screensaver.
So while I'll miss the slideshow screensaver as long as KDE has the desktop slideshow feature I haz backups!

One more thing using the Desktop slide show does sometimes spike the CPU use to 50% with an average usage of 15%.

I agree with those who have noted the customizability factor that screen savers can bring to your system. It is completely frivolous but I love the ability to setup custom wallpapers and screensavers and I think it represents a cool factor that makes KDE great. Yes the ability to customize is an important part of why I choose KDE.

Having said that, security and functionality are more important and I may miss the XSS but can definitely live without.

I realize that this poll is closed, and KDE 4.8 is released. I thought that I would comment, however, as I have recently decided to disable my screen saver, and I would like to explain why.

A lot of comments have indicated a belief that screen savers should no longer matter, and it is clear that there is no longer a risk of screen burn-in. Many of those comments indicate a very narrow view of how people use their computers. My computer isn't only a workstation where I perform my computing tasks and quickly turn it off when I'm done. I also watch TV and movies with it, and I display my own photography with it. Some people buy "digital picture frames" to display their photos. These are an extra cost, and they don't tend to be very large. My monitor is also my TV, a 55" LCD TV. Displaying my photos on it is better than getting prints of an equivalent size, as the cost of that for my collection of hundreds of photos would be prohibitive. As my TV/monitor dominates my living room, when I sit and read, or relax with company, a screen saver displaying my photos is a great background and an occasional focus of conversation. Recently, however, screen savers have become a real PITA.

With my recent upgrade to Kubuntu 12.04, I have had power settings imposed the launch my screen saver after a mere 10 minutes, which makes watching TV shows online problematic. I have corrected this problem, not once, but three times with, seemingly, each software update since 12.04 came out. Also, over the last few releases, my KDE slide show screen saver has become much more a gallery of transitional effects than a gallery of my photography. There is no way to turn off the transitions, and some last for many minutes (over 20 minutes in several cases) with no clear view of either the last photo or the next photo, but a strange mess of both. So, enough already, I turned my screen saver off. Sad. I used to think that Linux was great because it was so configurable: it let me make my computer work the way I wanted. It is a small thing to most, I'm sure, but this is a disappointment and an annoyance to me. Probably few, if any, care, but I wanted to state my reaction to this situation.