Screensavers!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Do you people use screensavers on your machine? I was very fond of Screensavers, going through the ones shipped with Windows in my early years, and using a super cool one called the "Psychedelic Screen Saver" later on (in a pirated version that was handed around among my friends back then, and that was potentially bugged).

After having a fade-to-black ever after starting to use a TFT-Monitor, I went over to using the XScreensaver (available as optional package in OpenSuse-Linux - I also installed a giant bundle with additional material), setting it to use a random one out of the huge list of available options whenever I go away from keyboard for 5 minutes.

As I had some doubts about the power consumption, I though it would only be for a short time - eventually, I did stick to it. As a side result, I try to shut my computer down when I don't need it (and the screensavers is quite a reminder - much more so, than a black screen).

Sometimes I think about making my own (and often, such recurring thoughts became eventually reality for me). Has anyone here experience in this regard, or did anyone of you also think about making one? 

Do you use a screensaver? If not: Why? Do you have a favorite one? What kind of Screensaver would you like to see, or even to create yourself?

I also recorded my screensaver yesterday 8)

(Either wait a minute or skip in!)

[Box Prophet]

I don't use a screensaver, but if I did, I think my WhiteCap program lets me use that as one! I downloaded it for my Windows Media Player and I really love it so far! I don't use one because if I'm on my laptop I'm using it and if I'm not using it I either shut it down for the day or I have the screen turn off completely after a certain amount of time. I only use the second option when I need to download a game overnight, so I need the screen off so I can sleep. 

Do modern laptops need screensavers? Can the screens burn in?

[alexela64]

I'm not sure if we "need" screensavers anymore, but I just can't fathom *not* having one. Right now, mine is Fliqlo, which what I think might be a Mac screensaver that I just really liked.
Before that, I used the family computer so often as a kid that I changed it to those color-changing bubbles, and it stayed as that until it finally kicked the bucket
Edit: a picture

[BlackMageGaming]

I remember when I was a kid I would see an old computer with the shooting stars screensaver in my grandparent's basement. It always interested me!

Currently, on my main machine I have a simple slideshow screensaver that is just a recreation of an old DOS screen. it looks something like this, with much more black space.


Besides that, my MacBook has a screensaver that displays all the music I have installed. All the album art is displayed in a grid, and if I click on any of them, it plays the song. Of course, this makes it awkward when I click to take my computer out of the screensaver, but I've since then learned to just hit the spacebar.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Can the screens burn in?

My screensaver says they can!

[Box Prophet]

My screensaver says they can!

Wuh-oh! Better get looking for myself one then, haha! 
I've never encountered any screen burn myself, at least not on my laptop. I wonder if anyone here has...

[xixxii]

i have boinc installed - it's a sort of distributed computing-power-sharing network type of thing that helps with massive research projects. when my computer is idle and would go to "sleep" it switches to computing stuff for that, and has a sorta screensaver with the boinc logo and a little counter of how much the computer is helping.

i loooove the old windows pipes screensaver, though! when i was a kid i used to just sit and watch it for fun. i've considered downloading it , but i'm not sure how screensavers actually work on windows 10...

[candycanearter07]

Woah cool! I didn't realize I'd find another XScreenSaver user in this thread!! I personally leave mine on "random saver - shift every 5 minutes" to get a lot of variety :D My favorites though are the BSOD saver since its funny to see ppl freaking out over the "windows bsod" on my computer and the XAnalogTV one for the atmospherics :) I did also try forcing it to run the minecraft april fools screensaver on wine but it did Not Work.

i have boinc installed - it's a sort of distributed computing-power-sharing network type of thing that helps with massive research projects. when my computer is idle and would go to "sleep" it switches to computing stuff for that, and has a sorta screensaver with the boinc logo and a little counter of how much the computer is helping.

i loooove the old windows pipes screensaver, though! when i was a kid i used to just sit and watch it for fun. i've considered downloading it , but i'm not sure how screensavers actually work on windows 10...

that is a really cool idea and i might look at getting bonic! though i dont know how useful my ol laptop would be.. I ADORE the old screensaver stuff too and im so glad that XScreenSaver includes some of the classic savers

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

@xixxii I heard about boinc (or a similar program) quite some time ago; decided against it back then, also since I thought that it would be a rather inefficient way of using power. Just did a quick search: Those who are concerned about it often get the answer that people use it to basically heat their homes, which is obviously a rather disastrous idea. Calculations about the merit when compared to idling/powering down would be quite interesting, but I can't find anything substantial (and it is naturally hard to do: To get "good" results, you'd have also to take the grey energy within the already produced hardware, the power consumption of a specialized scientific computer, and the - potential - scarcity of such a machine into account). Might have to reflect about this again.

On a related note: I'd be extremely interested to see some data regarding the use of power to shut down/boot up again vs black screen (vs screensaver) over a set amount of time. There must be a point where it isn't worth the additional power surge of rebooting, but I honestly can't tell about how many minutes we talk here :D.

Pipes is also available for the XScreensaver! (not identical, but close)

@candycanearter07 There are ways of using Wine to emulate screensavers; iirc Chicago95 had such a functionality (made a thread about it here, a while ago).

XAnalogTV is cool as fuck. I can also recommend GlitchPEG, Film Leader, and AppleII. Used the NASA-image RSS feed in the past, but changed to my own photo-folder a few months ago.

[candycanearter07]

@candycanearter07 There are ways of using Wine to emulate screensavers; iirc Chicago95 had such a functionality (made a thread about it here, a while ago).

XAnalogTV is cool as fuck. I can also recommend GlitchPEG, Film Leader, and AppleII. Used the NASA-image RSS feed in the past, but changed to my own photo-folder a few months ago.

I can RUN the screensaver by itself just fine, the issue is I can't get it to work under XScreenSaver.

Also, I completely forgot you can set the images source to something else!! I think I just left it to source from /usr/lib/backgrounds. Maybe I should try to find a cool RSS image feed to replace it with :)

[xixxii]

@xixxii I heard about boinc (or a similar program) quite some time ago; decided against it back then, also since I thought that it would be a rather inefficient way of using power. Just did a quick search: Those who are concerned about it often get the answer that people use it to basically heat their homes, which is obviously a rather disastrous idea.

my computer is gonna be on either way, so it doesn't seem especially inefficient to me! i only turn it off when i go to bed, so for me i figure it's more efficient for my idle computer to be being helpful instead of just sitting around doin nothin. my computer has never gotten so hot it heated up my room at all, that's wild! wouldn't that break the computer??

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

@candycanearter07 I believe Chicago95 delivered a wrapper for this, you could try if you really want ;).

The NASA images are dope, except that sometimes Nixon will appear. Here is the feed:
https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/lg_image_of_the_day.rss
You can also use the Wikipedia-Random-Article function for getting the screensaver texts. I still use this!

my computer is gonna be on either way, so it doesn't seem especially inefficient to me! i only turn it off when i go to bed, so for me i figure it's more efficient for my idle computer to be being helpful instead of just sitting around doin nothin.

While I don't want to interfere with your habits: Turning it off when you don't need it would surely save a few watts, depending on your hardware. Also, computing might take more energy than it would take in "pure idling" (e.g.: nearly no CPU, graphics card not used).
If someone uses boinc utilizing his GPU (which isn't activated by default, but recommended by Boinc!) for 5 hours a day on a machine that that consumes 450 Watt, this would result in 800kwh usage over the year, resulting (at least here) in over 250€ worth of power usage (which would be around a quarter of the energy cost of our 2 person-household, just to give an idea) additionally to wearing down the hardware. And here is the point where I'm unsure: Does the positive impact weigh out the environmental damage that is caused for the energy production? I really can't tell. Probably, most systems use less power, though. But then again, I can't say if the equation looks better for smaller systems, since they also deliver less results.

Given the global scales, all of this is, of course, negligible.

my computer has never gotten so hot it heated up my room at all, that's wild! wouldn't that break the computer??

My flatmate got a big, bad graphics card; playing recent games rises the rooms temperature considerately, which can become a problem in summer.

[candycanearter07]

@candycanearter07 I believe Chicago95 delivered a wrapper for this, you could try if you really want ;).

The NASA images are dope, except that sometimes Nixon will appear. Here is the feed:
https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/lg_image_of_the_day.rss
You can also use the Wikipedia-Random-Article function for getting the screensaver texts. I still use this!

I don't feel like risking the wrapper for now, thanks though!!
I'm gonna see if I can get it to source random images from wikimedia instead for some variety :)
Thanks for the suggestion for the Wikipedia articles!!! I completely forgot that you can set it to not use fortune all the time :)

Also, I set up boinc and it's been pretty nice. I set it to not run on battery so I don't waste power on it and stuff. I also ad-hoc'd a "widget" for it in my conky config. The only annoying thing is the boinc screensaver is permenantly stuck on "screensaver loading". Any ideas why that's happening?

[PurpleHello98]

I've heard a lot of people in general saying that screensavers are unnecessary nowadays, and I can't disagree, but I just think they're neat! I like having a screensaver of my "My Pictures" folder cycling through, so I can get reminded of all my favourite memories. :)

I did also try forcing it to run the minecraft april fools screensaver on wine but it did Not Work.

After reading this, I downloaded it for myself and installed it on my PC, so thanks for this! I didn't know there had been a Minecraft screensaver. Pro tip for anyone else since it took me a while to figure this out: unzip the file and then right-click the screen saver file and click "install".



(Side note: does anyone else get a little frustrated that people keep calling desktop backgrounds screensavers?  It's one of my random minor pet peeves.)

Edit: literally right after posting this, I saw that this Web site here, which was open in a background tab for me, has its own screen saver when you let it idle for a while! I think that's super cool!!!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I've heard a lot of people in general saying that screensavers are unnecessary nowadays, and I can't disagree, but I just think they're neat!

The XScreensaver FAQ has a good answer one on these:

Some pedantic jerk told me that screen savers aren't really "necessary" any more?

How terrible it must be for them to have no soul. What has broken in their life to make them hate joy?