Xfce4-Screensaver Has Its First Release - Fork Of MATE Screensaver, Forked From GNOME

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xfce4-Screensaver Has Its First Release - Fork Of MATE Screensaver, Forked From GNOME

As a new alternative over XScreenSaver or using other desktop environments' screensaver functionality, xfce4-screensaver has out its first release albeit of alpha quality...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Xfce4-Screensaver-0.1

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

Forkception.

[szymon_g]

What's the purpose of a screen saver on non-CRT screens?

[slalomsk8er]

What's the purpose of a screen saver on non-CRT screens?

Interior design

[Gusar]

What's the purpose of a screen saver on non-CRT screens?

To turn off the display after 10min (or other configurable amount) of inactivity, so it doesn't unnecessarily consume power. Or don't turn off the display even if there's no activity but there's a video running (you don't want the display to go off while watching a movie). And things like that.

Screensaver nowadays doesn't stand for "run some sort of animation to prevent burn-in". Nowadays it stands for "save power".

[Michael_S]

What's the purpose of a screen saver on non-CRT screens?

I think mate-screensaver also handles screen locking, so it's a security feature.

...though mate-screensaver is the only part of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 that has been unreliable for me. Ctrl+Alt+L works for a day or two to lock my screen, and then it doesn't. I have to kill the process and restart it for the locking to work again. Maybe they should have forked something else. (I did file a bug, it's had no activity. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate/+bug/1783224 )

[Serafean]

To turn off the display after 10min (or other configurable amount) of inactivity, so it doesn't unnecessarily consume power. Or don't turn off the display even if there's no activity but there's a video running (you don't want the display to go off while watching a movie). And things like that.

Screensaver nowadays doesn't stand for "run some sort of animation to prevent burn-in". Nowadays it stands for "save power".

Nope. The screensaver has nothing to do with this. What you're talking about is DPMS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_D...ment_Signaling ), which is a signal sent to the screen, via the GPU. In KDE, AFAIK this is handled by Solid.
Screensaver's main use today is akin to a secondary sddm (user switching), and locking the session (which should be handled by the window manager anyway).

Otherwise I agree with slalomsk8er, interior design.

[tildearrow]

Screensaver nowadays doesn't stand for "run some sort of animation to prevent burn-in". Nowadays it stands for "save power".

What about the advanced screensavers with real-time 3D landscapes and the like?

They won't save power.

[Gusar]

Nope. The screensaver has nothing to do with this. What you're talking about is DPMS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_D...ment_Signaling ), which is a signal sent to the screen, via the GPU. In KDE, AFAIK this is handled by Solid.
Screensaver's main use today is akin to a secondary sddm (user switching), and locking the session (which should be handled by the window manager anyway).

It's possible to use libXss (the screensaver extension) to control DPMS, for example mpv does exactly that to prevent the display from turning off during video playback. So, in X at least, screen-saving and DPMS are intertwined. But you do have a point that session locking is another function of modern screensavers.

What about the advanced screensavers with real-time 3D landscapes and the like?

They won't save power.

Well, people run those to have something pretty on the screen during inactivity, not to save it (in either the "prevents burn-in" or "saves power" sense). So those shouldn't really be called savers anymore. But then, when has the "tar" utility last seen an actual tape, so sometimes names remain even though the function changes.

[MoonMoon]

XFCE developers: Hey, we are currently only 15 core developers, so we are a bit slow and just about two years behind our release cycle.
Also XFCE developers: Hey, but we definitely need our own suite of screensavers!