gnome-screensaver sucks. xscreensaver is awesome.
My first Linux experience was with Red Hat 9. One of the thing that struck me as pure awesome was the screensavers. My favourites were "Blaster", where these little robots flying in space try to destroy each other, "circuit" where 3D electronic components float across the screen, and "barcode" for that consumer whore vibe. And, unlike in Windows, you didn't just set one screensaver (though you could if you wanted to) you select which screensavers you want on the rotation. I left them all on at first; it led me to discovering some pretty cool demos. "Whoa! That maze is solving itself."
This was on Red Hat 9. When I upgraded to Ubuntu, one of my first reactions is "where did all the cool screensavers go?"
Ubuntu came with a few screensavers. They were all polished and "professional" looking, but lacked the hacker charm of screensavers like "phosphor" or "apple2" or "BSOD", or the simple genius of "blaster". Also, like Windows, I couldn't set a rotation, I was limited to picking one screensaver again. While I was somewhat unhappy with this situation, I wasn't unhappy enough to expend energy doing something about it. But that would change.
A few of you know I am a fan of bzflag, I put in half an hour (or more) pretty much daily. I don't usually play online multiplayer games, but I found a server I really like. But I digress.
I hadn't played at all since last summer, due to lack of time. When I started playing this summer, I noticed that every 22 minutes, my screen would flicker, the game would un-fullscreen itself, be windowed for a little while, the screen would flicker again, and my game would be fullscreen again. This was extremely irritating. Imagine you've got the Stealth flag and you're stalking someone, then your screen flickers. Next thing you know, you're dead. Repeat several times, and I was shaking my fists in frustration.
Apparently, I wasn't the only person who was having this problem. It was researching this problem that I learned that Ubuntu didn't ship with xscreensaver like Red Hat 9 did, it shipped with gnome-screensaver instead, source of my woes. This is a bug in gnome-screensaver: if you're in a fullscreen game and not using the mouse, gnome-screensaver won't register any activity, and turn on after N minutes. Argh.
So I replaced it with xscreensaver. Not only are my bzflag killing sprees now uninterrupted, but I have all my cool screensavers back. Thanks, jwz!
This was on Red Hat 9. When I upgraded to Ubuntu, one of my first reactions is "where did all the cool screensavers go?"
Ubuntu came with a few screensavers. They were all polished and "professional" looking, but lacked the hacker charm of screensavers like "phosphor" or "apple2" or "BSOD", or the simple genius of "blaster". Also, like Windows, I couldn't set a rotation, I was limited to picking one screensaver again. While I was somewhat unhappy with this situation, I wasn't unhappy enough to expend energy doing something about it. But that would change.
A few of you know I am a fan of bzflag, I put in half an hour (or more) pretty much daily. I don't usually play online multiplayer games, but I found a server I really like. But I digress.
I hadn't played at all since last summer, due to lack of time. When I started playing this summer, I noticed that every 22 minutes, my screen would flicker, the game would un-fullscreen itself, be windowed for a little while, the screen would flicker again, and my game would be fullscreen again. This was extremely irritating. Imagine you've got the Stealth flag and you're stalking someone, then your screen flickers. Next thing you know, you're dead. Repeat several times, and I was shaking my fists in frustration.
Apparently, I wasn't the only person who was having this problem. It was researching this problem that I learned that Ubuntu didn't ship with xscreensaver like Red Hat 9 did, it shipped with gnome-screensaver instead, source of my woes. This is a bug in gnome-screensaver: if you're in a fullscreen game and not using the mouse, gnome-screensaver won't register any activity, and turn on after N minutes. Argh.
So I replaced it with xscreensaver. Not only are my bzflag killing sprees now uninterrupted, but I have all my cool screensavers back. Thanks, jwz!