Does anyone besides me think it would be a nice idea if the screen locker would run xscreensaver … screensavers.
And before anyone argues that screensavers are not necessary anymore… Neither are themes, desktop effects, wallpapers, etc.
Screensavers like the other things simply bring me joy.
For me personally (not advocating anything here), I will not be moving to Wayland until I can run my block tube screen saver running under Wayland.
Thanks for your indulgence.
I just run xscreensaver and skip the screen locker.
For home, that’s an option… maybe… For work… not really
I seriously can’t see what the opposition to allowing/running a screensaver is??
Yes, I agree, for work, a screenlocker is probably pretty vital, but for home…??
I have PCs that run media/google/whatever, with no real need for security, but a screensaver serves a purpose of (maybe) extending life of hardware, but also just being a bit of entertainment/whatever…
Bring back the Flying Toasters!!
Can I still get xscreensaver to work on wayland…?
Opposition is a strong term someone just has to do the work and currently no doing work sees it as a priority so it’s not getting done.
I’m not sure of the exact technical issues but it’s likely more than trivial so unless someone really wants to make it happen it won’t.
I have used “Energy Saving >> Screen Energy Saving >> Swith off after ‘n’ minutes”, for years, within KDE Plasma 5 (at home).
Withing KDE Plasma 6, I started using “Energy Saving >> Suspend >> Sleep”.
That’s not the same thing and you know it.
None of the eye candy is necessary to get anything done on one’s computer. However take away wobbly windows and see what kind of noise that would create.
Is it really too much to ask to have this extra little bit of joy. Just have the option to run xscreensaver animations in the background of the locker? Really?
The screen locker just removed custom themes a few weeks back out of concerns that the (executable code) theme can capture passwords and potentially do malicious things with it.
The challenge with the screen locker is that it’s a single window that draws both background and password dialog into the same window. Whereas xscreensaver is a separate window that would have to replace the background, while at the same time it needs to be prevented from capturing user input. From a technical perspective, embedding the contents of some other program’s window is more involved than reusing Plasma’s wallpaper plugins, which is something that can be done already.
I’m sure it’s doable in some way, but it’s not as easy as simply flipping a switch, and if we get it wrong on the input handling side then that’s a security hole right there. That’s not a patch you’ll get done in 2-3 days of work, that’s a serious chunk of time that someone will have to invest, at the expense of other development efforts to fix bugs or improve productivity or get apps & games running more smoothly. A developer will ask themselves if Plasma wallpaper plugins aren’t perhaps already a good enough replacement and we just need more of those.
Maybe the answer is yes, it’s worth it, but so far no one has stepped up to invest either their time or money in getting this development done. This may change in the future if there’s a big enough movement.
I just tried out the Shader wallpaper plugin, which seems like a pretty decent candidate for screensaver-like backgrounds. Unfortunately most of them don’t seem to work in the screen locker for some reason, but that’s a fix which is (I think) much easier to argue for.
I thought it would be worthwhile to figure out why shader wallpapers aren’t working. Found the reason, submitted a merge request. Here’s to at least some notion of animated screensavers as lock screen background.
I just installed the Shader plugin 3.01. It works great as a desktop background.
This looks promsing. I would love to see this working as a background for the locker.
Thanks for the work. I hope your code gets added soon.
Now if there would be a shader for the block tube… lol…, It would be perfect 
Well, I just went back to Plasma6 + X11, so I can run screensavers! (xscreensaver still works well in that combo.)
Let me know when Wayland can run “proper” screensavers, and I’ll be back.
Plasma 6.1 supports the option “Never require password” in the Screen Locking configuration module, a.k.a. use Screen Locker backgrounds as pure screensavers. My fix for Shader Wallpaper got merged into 6.1.1.
The rest is all up to wallpaper plugins. Plasma by default ships Slideshow, and Pling / KDE Store will be the place to look for other dynamic wallpaper plugins. xscreensaver uses X11 APIs so it will never be usable directly, but perhaps we’ll someday see a port that can be plugged into the Plasma wallpaper API.
Great to hear