Re: Xscreensaver

[Klaus Knopper <debian-knoppix@knopper.net>]

Hello Jim,

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 01:30:37PM -0600, Jim Pritchett wrote:
>    Xscreensaver now pops up a message that says the version in Knoppix is
>    "really old" and that I should upgrade to the newest version.

Oh no... This is annoying. I was not aware of xscreensaver containing
such a time-dependent message. :-(

I wonder if I should create a fork for xscreensaver with the message
removed. Since xscreensaver is not used for locking the screen in
Knoppix, there is not much of a security problem involved if it is NOT
regularly updated.

>  Judging by
>    some of the Xscreensaver notes about dependencies, I'm guessing that
>    actually getting the newest version to work would be difficult with my
>    limited knowledge.  Has anyone gotten a more recent version working with
>    Knoppix?

apt-get install xscreensaver/testing should do the trick.

>    Note:  the screensaver is sometimes fun, but doesn't really matter so it
>    isn't worth anyone's time to mess with it.  I'm just curious if someone
>    already has and if so, what they learned.

You can safely remove the package

apt-get --purge remove xscreensaver

However, in the (few) Knoppix versions that had no screen saver other
than the "display poweroff" builtin in Xorg, users were telling me that
"nice screensavers and games" would be the most important thing for
Linux in order to be able to "compete", that's why I kept it in there.

>    P.S.  My first computer was a brand new Apple II+ with a whopping 48
>    kilobytes of RAM.  Many said "More RAM than anyone could ever need." 
>    LOL.  That is one of several old computer system things that the
>    screensaver does.  I also remember when Pong was new and too expensive for
>    regular folks to own.  I also remember getting Abend errors at work.

FYI: xscreensaver consumes about 4.7 Megs of RAM when inactive, and
around 25MB when a OpenGL plugin is running.

Regards
-Klaus