How can I change or install screensavers?

Solution 1:

Background

The Gnome 3 Devs dumped the old gnome-screensaver. The replacement screensaver is just a blank screen.

The Canonical Devs thought it was a useful idea to continue and raised a blue-print for implementation in Oneiric.

A few ideas were raised such as a Compiz specific implementation or reusing a Lubuntu/Xubuntu screensaver implementation.

However, at the time of writing, no implementation has been started.

XScreenSaver

installation

Potential workaround - installing xscreensaver

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra

Now remove gnome-screensaver

sudo apt-get remove gnome-screensaver

Now start the xscreensaver configuration tool - from a terminal:

xscreensaver-demo

or search from the Dash:

Click OK to both prompts asking to turn-off Gnome Daemon and to start xscreensaver-daemon respectively.

starting xscreensaver from login

Now to start the xscreensaver daemon on login you need to search in Dash for startup applications

Create a new entry running the command xscreensaver -nosplash

Locking the screen

If you want to manually lock the screen with the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+L then you will need to run the following to repoint the old gnome-screensaver lock to xscreensaver

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver-command

Logout or reboot for all changes to take effect.

Solution 2:

Ubuntu 11.10 doesn’t come with screensaver package installed. You must install xscreensaver if you want screensavers activated when your computer becomes idled.

1. sudo apt-get remove gnome-screensaver
2. sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra

Links

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screensaver
2. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1860551
3. http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/10/enable-screensavers-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot/
4. http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/10/enable-screensavers-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot/

Disclaimer

Above method works in 11.10 ,i didn't tried in 12.04

Solution 3:

Please take note that, for Ubuntu 12.04 and in order to be able to run several screensavers using images from the harddisk (e.g., Carousel, Gleidescope, GLSlideshow, Jigsaw, or XAnalogTV) , I had to install some additional packages.

These are:

• libxss-dev
• libxss1-dbg
• libxss1
• kdelibs-bin
• kdelibs5-data
• kdelibs5-plugin

Many others might get installed automatically together with the ones listed, particularly KDE libraries.

I found the instructions in this blog.