Bring Salvation to Your Screen

by Eric Foster-Johnson

July 25, 2001 —

Saving your screen may sound like an attempt at some form of religious
conversion, but the basic idea stems from very old computer monitors
that experienced a form of burn-in, where the screen ended up
displaying longstanding images and making it hard, if not impossible,
to read. That led to a number of screen-saving programs that watch for
periods of inactivity and then blank the screen. Blanking the screen
being so boring, most screen-saving applications now display some sort
of moving image on the screen, which avoids the burn-in problem.

The X Window System used on Linux defines the API for writing screen
saver programs but most available screen savers are compatible with the
xscreensaver program, included with most Linux distributions. The
xscreensaver program (http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver) comes with about
one hundred different screen savers, including BSOD -- a Windows NT-
like "Blue Screen of Death" -- and Xmatrix -- something similar to the
wall of green text in the science-fiction movie "The Matrix".

Both the KDE and GNOME desktops come with a variety of screen savers,
which you can select from the desktop control panel. You can download
more from the xscreensaver and other sites though. For example, KFlash
(http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash) allows you to play Flash movies as a
screen saver and They're Coming To get You Barbara
(http://www.psnw.com/~smokeserpent/code) is a screen saver based on the
cult movie classic, "Night of the Living Dead".

Some of these screen savers require extra libraries for the graphics or
audio, but these Web pages all describe the requirements.

ITworld