How can I change or install screensavers?

Background

The Gnome 3 Devs dumped the old gnome-screensaver. The replacement screensaver is just a blank screen.

The Canonical Devs thought it was a useful idea to continue and raised a blue-print for implementation in Oneiric.

A few ideas were raised such as a Compiz specific implementation or reusing a Lubuntu/Xubuntu screensaver implementation.

However, at the time of writing, no implementation has been started.

XScreenSaver

installation

Potential workaround - installing xscreensaver

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra

Now remove gnome-screensaver

sudo apt-get remove gnome-screensaver

Now start the xscreensaver configuration tool - from a terminal:

xscreensaver-demo

or search from the Dash:

enter image description here

Click OK to both prompts asking to turn-off Gnome Daemon and to start xscreensaver-daemon respectively.

dash search

starting xscreensaver from login

Now to start the xscreensaver daemon on login you need to search in Dash for startup applications

Create a new entry running the command xscreensaver -nosplash

Locking the screen

If you want to manually lock the screen with the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+L then you will need to run the following to repoint the old gnome-screensaver lock to xscreensaver

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver-command

Logout or reboot for all changes to take effect.


Ubuntu 11.10 doesn’t come with screensaver package installed. You must install xscreensaver if you want screensavers activated when your computer becomes idled.

  1. sudo apt-get remove gnome-screensaver
  2. sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra enter image description here

Links

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screensaver
  2. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1860551
  3. http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/10/enable-screensavers-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot/
  4. http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/10/enable-screensavers-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot/

Disclaimer

Above method works in 11.10 ,i didn't tried in 12.04


Please take note that, for Ubuntu 12.04 and in order to be able to run several screensavers using images from the harddisk (e.g., Carousel, Gleidescope, GLSlideshow, Jigsaw, or XAnalogTV) , I had to install some additional packages.

These are:

  • libxss-dev
  • libxss1-dbg
  • libxss1
  • kdelibs-bin
  • kdelibs5-data
  • kdelibs5-plugin

Many others might get installed automatically together with the ones listed, particularly KDE libraries.

I found the instructions in this blog.

Tags:

Screensaver

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