SCREENSAVERS ARE JUST EYE CANDY

Now that I'm using Linux Mint as my "daily driver" (everyday computer) I've started documenting some of the often quite bizarre issues that arise when switching from Windows to Linux.

Screensavers don't seem like such a big deal, but they are actually a good example of the typical sorts of issues that send NEWBS whimpering back to the dark fist of Microscum.

Before going any further I want to emphasize that this is only a minor issue that is not preventing me from using my Linux PC. But I'm going on about it here to bring attention to the sort of thing that needs to be changed if Linux is ever to become more popular. I certainly don't recommend trying to read or understand any of the purple text below. That is all geek speak which might as well be Chinese for most people. It's just here as an example of a lot of the incomprehensible Linux info that is posted online.

Here is a website that provides some non-geek information about Linux - https://www.reallinuxuser.com/

The way that Linux Mint installs itself by default, there is effectively no screensaver. After a while the computer just goes into sleep mode and switches to a black screen, so it looks like it is turned off. In Windows I would pick up my mouse and check if the light on the mouse was on, but in Linux even that is off, so without tapping the keyboard and waiting to see if the computer eventually wakes up in it's own good time, so I have no idea if it's even turned on or not.

 

This is probably all because some GEEK decided that screensavers are "just eye candy" and users are better off to not have one because they "waste power and heat up your CPU" as well as being a "security risk" (Yes, these are quotes from an actual GEEK on a Linux forum).

And that is the sort of thinking that explains why a completely free and in many ways totally superior operating system like Linux Mint only has a fraction of the market share of a load of badly designed globalist spyware like Windows 10. There are other reasons, but this sort of thinking does not help.

Of course you can add a screensaver, hundreds of screen savers in fact, because this is Linux, so you can change anything. But of course this is not as easy as it first sounds, because this is Linux, and nothing ever is.

All you need to do is install Xscreensaver and you will then have 200 free screensavers that you can set up to display whenever and however you want. Cool! 

What Exactly is XScreenSaver?

 
XScreenSaver is an extensive and expandable collection of over 200 different screensavers that add visual flair and fun to otherwise dull computer displays when they are idle or sleeping.

First released in 1993 by Open Source developer Jamie Zawinski, XScreenSaver has been delighting Linux users for over 25 years with continually updated screensavers ranging from simple geometrics animations to complex real-time renders and even interactive displays.

Over that quarter decade of development, XScreenSaver has racked up some impressive stats:

    1.2 million downloads across major Linux distribution repositories
    An average rating of 4 out 5 from over 3,000 reviews on Ubuntu universe
    Featured as a top 10 must-have app on Linux systems by publications like LINUX+ magazine

Beyond quantities and ratings, XScreenSaver also wins praise from Linux users for features like:

    The sheer variety of visual styles – from abstract to intricate photo-realistic animations
    Customizability with per-display settings, shuffle modes and viewer-provided content
    The light footprint compared to other screensaver options – important for older hardware

Simply put, if you want to unlock a world of cool, creative screensavers for your Linux Mint desktop, XScreenSaver is hands-down one of the best choices out there.

 https://thelinuxcode.com/install-xscreensaver-linux-mint/

So what is the catch? Firstly most of the pre-installed screensavers appear to be from the 90's and they look absolutely terrible. And many of the others on the menu are not actually installed. But there are still lots of choices, and some of them look pretty cool. So what am I moaning about?

The ISSUE. As with many things Linux, there is an issue. When you reboot your computer it reverts to the power saving defaults that the original GEEK set up to save the world from dangerous "EYE CANDY"

Bugger... Can this be fixed? Of course it can, this is Linux, so everything can be fixed. But you will probably have to read solutions from GEEKS who will include the words "easy" and "type" in the same post...

Here is an example of an old forum reply:

Yup. Easy peezy.

Add the xscreensaver daemon to your list of startup programs. Go to System / Preferences / Sessions / Startup Programs, click "Add" and type "xscreensaver -no-splash".

Then
(in a terminal)
gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/gnome-screensaver-preferences.desktop

find this line:
Exec=gnome-screensaver-preferences
change to:
Exec=xscreensaver-demo

comment out the last couple lines like so:
#X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
#X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-screensaver
#X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general
#X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-screensaver

lastly,
Click System / Preferences / Screensaver to launch the xscreensaver configuration window, go to the "Advanced" tab and uncheck the "Power Management Enabled" checkbox. This should stop xscreensaver's power saving features from conflicting with Gnome Power Manager

 https://www.computerforum.com/threads/adding-more-screensavers-to-xscreensaver.205759/

 

 But that was long ago, in 2024 all this stuff will be sorted right? - NO! OMG WTF?

Each desktop environment has its own system for launching long-running daemons like XScreenSaver, and since many of them come bundled with their own (buggy, insecure, inferior) screen-locking frameworks, it is also necessary to disable those other frameworks before XScreenSaver can work.
Installing Xscreensaver on Gnome or Unity

For many years, GNOME included XScreenSaver as-is, and everything just worked. Not any more!

1: Fully uninstall the other screen saver packages:

        sudo apt remove gnome-screensaver
        sudo apt remove mate-screensaver
        sudo apt remove cinnamon-screensaver
        sudo apt remove light-locker
    or
        sudo rpm -e gnome-screensaver
        sudo rpm -e mate-screensaver
        sudo rpm -e cinnamon-screensaver
        sudo rpm -e light-locker

    Be careful that it doesn't try to uninstall all of GNOME.
2: Turn off GNOME's built-in blanking.

    Set all of the following settings to "Never" or "Off", as these are all controlled by xscreensaver-settings(1) now:

    "Settings / Privacy / Screen Lock / Blank Screen Delay"
    "Settings / Privacy / Screen Lock / Automatic Screen Lock"
    "Settings / Power / Blank Screen"
    "Settings / Power / Automatic Suspend"
3: Launch XScreenSaver at login.

    Launch "Tweaks", select "Startup Applications", click the plus sign, and select "XScreenSaver" (not "XScreenSaver Settings") from the (very long) menu.

    Or, see the "Launching Xscreensaver from Systemd" section below. That works too.
4: Make GNOME's "Lock" icon use XScreenSaver.

    This used to work, but no longer does with GNOME 3.38.  If you figure it out, let me know!  This still works for Cinnamon 4.8 and MATE 1.24:

        sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command \
               /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver-command
        sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command \
            /usr/bin/cinnamon-screensaver-command
        sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command \
                /usr/bin/mate-screensaver-command
        sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command \
               /usr/bin/xfce4-screensaver-command
        sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command \
                    /usr/bin/light-locker-command

    This change will get blown away when you upgrade.

https://www.mankier.com/1/xscreensaver

Let's face it, no regular computer user is going to do all that just to get a screensaver. Until Linux stops dicking around with this GEEK crap, Windows will continue to rule. 

So have I sorted my screensaver? - No, not really, that would take more tweaking. At this point I have just changed the power settings to never go to sleep, so now I have the default screensaver showing, which is my usual wallpaper image as background with the time & date moving around the screen. 

Having the time onscreen is actually quite handy, and now I can see that the PC is on, so I'm just going to leave it like that for now, but if I later have time & inclination, I may go onto the Mint Forum and try to find out how to set up Xscreensaver properly. But that might involve doing something weird with a daemon so it can all wait for another day...

 

LINUX GEEKS

In this post I'll be referring to "GEEKS" quite a bit. This is not entirely disrespectful, I do appreciate all the work geeks put in, creating open source software. But like so many people transitioning from Windows to Linux I have come to view geeks as a bizarre sub-species of computer users who take a perverse pleasure in exerting their superiority over NEWBS (New Linux users - I am a newb)

Making the shift from Windows to Linux is neither massively difficult, nor is it entirely easy. It's a bit of both, but a lot of the information online is biased, or badly presented, or created by geeks who are sometimes making things harder than they need to be.

Possibly some computer geeks place a value on themselves that partly stems from being the only ones who understand the technology, so making them gatekeeper tech gods. Which they get a buzz out of. 

Unfortunately this tends to mean that rather than making things easier for newbs by giving them simple instructions, they often give out incomprehensible instructions like "Just enter this simple command in Terminal". Their condescending tone of "this is all really easy" is infuriating and one of the main reasons so many newbs give up.

Geeks seem to be unwilling to accept that about 90% of people using computers are not other geeks, but regular people who want to have most, or even everything they do accessible through buttons and menus that they can click on. 

Personally I like to do everything on my PC using my mouse, and am about as anti keyboard command as it's possible to be. The very word "type" totally turns me off. "Copy & paste" I can do if necessary, but not "type" What I actually want to see are the words "click on".

Life often plays out in strange ways, and I have brain damage to the left hemisphere of my brain, so am very right brain dominant, but I still use computers anyway, and even sometimes seem to end up trying to explain computer stuff to other non-geeks who just want some basic instructions. 

My perspective from being a right brain computer user is a bit different to most of the people who are usually commentating on this stuff, so I imagine any actual geeks who see my posts might view me as a clueless idiot. Which I sort of am.

During the process of transitioning from Windows 7 (Yes, I am still using Win 7 in 2024) to Linux Mint, it has struck me that a lot of the information online is confusing rather than helpful, and I wish I could have read (Yes READ, not viewed endless badly done videos) web-pages that explained things in a way that made sense to me.

Here I'm attempting to leave some notes for my friends who at some point will be wanting to escape the clutches of Microsoft. Windows 11 is likely to be the final straw for a lot of people with it's obvious and intrusive spyware, so the end of Windows for non sheeple is looming close on the horizon. Linux is the only real option for anyone who wants to continue using a computer without selling their soul to the deep state. (Yes, Apple & Google are spying too)

As I've found from sticking with Windows 7 and refusing to use Windows 8 or Windows 10, it is possible to soldier on for years with an unsupported operating system, and I expect I'll keep using Windows 7 on some of my old laptops for years to come. But installing Windows 7 on more modern hardware is a pig of a job, mainly because sorting out drivers can be really tricky, and there are ever increasing problems with software no longer working properly. 

I will probably do a post about some of the Win 7 work arounds, because Windows 7 is slowly gaining a cult following as the last relatively low spyware version of Windows. But Linux is the future and I think everyone who wants to use a computer with some degree of privacy is going to have to get the hang of it. So I'll do some more Linux posts attempting to clarify a few things.

 

BEST LINUX DISTRO FOR GEEKS

In doing some research into Linux, I could see that that the requirements of a non tech user who just wants a working computer are very different from a geek who wants to tweek things all day.

The best distro for a low tech chump like me looks to be Mint, but if I was a geek I think I would go with Debian.

Debian was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock, and the name "Debian" was formed from the first name of his then-girlfriend (later ex-wife) Debra Lynn and his own first name.

Debian is the source code language that distros like Mint & Ubuntu are based on, & it's also a distro in itself, aimed at geeks and tech heads

 

RETURNING TO LINUX

 Like many people I'm a reluctant Windows user who hates Microscum, and does not want Kill Gate's evil fist up my rectum. So I have long wanted to escape and move to Linux.

In fact I did try to do that back in 2010, but I'm not very technically advanced and it was all just too difficult, so I gave up and went back to Windows XP. (A modified version called Last XP). At that time the programs I was mainly using were Microsoft Office, and Adobe Photoshop, neither of which work on Linux. I did a blog post my Linux experiment in 2010: https://www.frot.co.nz/design/computing/linux/

Now I've been using Libre Office for years, and all my email is done through Proton Mail rather than Outlook, so a big part of my software problem is already sorted. I'm still using an old version of Photoshop (CS6), but I can see that GIMP 2 can do everything I'm doing in Photoshop. Gimp 3 is due out soon, and that will probably be more advanced than the Photoshop version I'm using. So I'm now more motivated to learn Gimp.

Meanwhile the various Linux systems ("distros") have moved on a lot. So while Windows has been going backwards since Windows 7 (2014), Linux has been continued to slowly develop and improve over the past decade. 

One of the biggest roadblocks to new users switching to Linux is that it's all just too confusing. There are endless options, both for the distros, and the software as well. But nobody seems to want to give a straight answer about what is best. 

The website Distrowatch is probably the best source of Linux information, but the first thing you are confronted with there is that there are 272 distros. And most of them have multiple versions, which are constantly being updated. So there are actually thousands of distros! Here are the current top 40:

What I wanted is for someone to tell me which ones are any good. And it turns out if you are a non tech user like me, there are only a handful of suitable choices.

Back in 2010 I tried about 10 distros, and ended up going with Ubuntu. But I never actually liked it or felt at home using it. And this may sound odd, but I also just didn't like the people it seemed to attract. There were lots of angry geeks mouthing off in forums, and it was all just a bad vibe. I later found that most of the other distros were friendly and helpful. 

 In 2010 the other distros I liked were PCLinuxOS, Puppy, and Mint. But with each one I had problems that stopped me using it. At that time Ubuntu seemed more advanced, and it was the number one distro, but it was about to start going backwards.

This time around, I only found two distros I liked enough to seriously consider, Mint and Zorin. I gave both a decent try, and found that although Zorin looks really cool, and is better sorted out of the box, once I started learning a bit more, I could get Mint looking and working how I wanted, while on Zorin I had a few things I couldn't get to work. I came to the conclusion Mint is more stable, has better support, and is fully sorted.

So now I'm gradually shifting over to using Linux Mint. It hasn't been a quick process, because I've been using Windows since the 90's and making changes is difficult. But looking at what Microsoft are up to, I can see there is no future there and I have to find an alternative. This is my Mint desktop so far:

LINUX MISINFORMATION

Like everything else on the internet, much of the information posted about Linux is misinformation. When I was looking into the different distros I came across this example:

The 11 Best Debian-Based Linux Distributions

I know that compared to misinformation on the covidhoax or the death jabs for example, this is all pretty trivial, but I've been geeking out this week and that is what I've mostly been looking at.

 

Linux review sites generally use pictures of the desktops of each of the distros they are featuring. They also tend to rank them in lists such as "Top 10". These are usually based on some sort of objective assessment and reasons are usually given.

 

In this case the "The 11 Best Debian-Based Linux Distributions" seems to be chosen entirely to make Ubuntu look good at #1 and Mint look bad at #11. I'm guessing they were paid some sort of kickback to do this. probably from Ubuntu who have been eclipsed by Mint now.

 

 

On Distrowatch Mint is currently ranked #1 and Ubuntu is at #5. Ubuntu hasn't been number #1 for about five years, and it's popularity is slowly dropping.

  

In their desperate attempt to make Mint look bad they posted good screenshots of the first 10 distros, and then used a terrible picture for Mint in last place at #11 - very odd!

 

 

They would have actually have had to change a bunch of the default settings to make Mint look this bad, and they have even made Firefox look like Chrome for this screenshot.

 

Grudgingly they admit "Linux Mint is a distro meant to be complete "out of the box", even more than Ubuntu, which it's based on"

 

 

In total contrast, this list is of "The 12 Best Debian-based Linux Distributions" is much better , but from reading the comments it appears it was originally a top 10, with no mention of Mint, that was later changed to a Top 12 with two versions of Mint included. And neither of these lists includes the Debian distro itself. Odder and Odder.