Episode: 558
Title: HPR0558: xscreensaver
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0558/hpr0558.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:02:00

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ken Falla, and today's episode is on installing
XScreensaver on KDE4.
I didn't know I needed to install XScreensaver on KDE4 until I went looking for the blue screen
of XScreensaver, which I knew existed.
I also knew some other screen savers existed, and I wanted the ability to install KDE4
for some reason comes with a very limited set.
They're quite nice, all right, but not a relatively limited set of screen savers.
As I searched, I found out that the blue screen of that screen saver was located in XScreensaver
dash data, that dash extras, and when I looked in there, I could even find an XML file
under user share XScreensaver config blue screen of that BSOD.xml.
But for some reason, it wasn't appearing in the KDE option for configuring screen savers.
So eventually I came across, youngness and bitch is still less to believe, yeah, I'm
mining the kids here, so they've been very good and very quiet, so I'm just going to record
a show in between.
So I came across this how-to on the XScreensaver, and I'll basically read a little portion of
it.
KDE also has invented the rune screen saver framework, instead of simply using XScreensaver.
And it goes into a rant of why that's a bad thing.
So basically turns out that the KDE screen savers doesn't support XScreensaver.
They give you a quick little how-to on how to disable the current screen saver and start
the other one.
Now what I did was, I went into control center, and then under display screen savers, I unchecked
start automatically.
And then I went to, let me see, look at it, blah, blah, blah, yeah, so I disabled that,
and then I located auto start in my home directory, so I founded in.kde auto start, and then
I created a desktop entry using vi, vi space.kde, forward slash capital A uto strt, forward
slash xscreensaver.desktop.
And in there, there's entry desktop entry, exact equal xscreensaver name, equal xscreensaver,
type equals application, xkde start up notify equals false.
This of course will be in the show notes.
And then one last thing I had to do was place the xdesktop underscore lock, or krunner underscore
lock, or kscreensaver lock for a script that we'll call xscreensaver dash command dash
lock.
So when you press the lock button to lock the keyboard, it will call the xscreensaver
one, as opposed to the kde build in one.
And I did a locate on all those three options, and I came up with a file called user lib
kde4 lib extras case screensaver locker.
So I backed that up, and I edited a new file.
I edited that file to include hash bash, forward slash bin sh, xscreensaver dash command,
space dash lock.
And then I changed mod minus x, that file name, and then all of a sudden I was done.
One thing that was a bit funny was that xscreensaver dash command was missing.
And as it turns out, I didn't have xscreensaver installed, despite having xscreensaver dash
data dash extras installed.
So I had to go to the trouble of installing xscreensaver, and I installed that and just
had some recommended packages, you know, if you're buying a Tlar, buying a Tlar, can
you be just still?
Thank you, Will.
Okay, I did a pseudo-appget install xscreensaver xli, space x load image, space blah, blah, blah,
lobby in the show notes for this episode.
And then lo and behold, it was installed and it worked as if by magic.
And there was much amusement environment as I walked away from my desk, running Linux
to having a blue screen of death for Windows 2003 server on my screen, caused much
merriment.
However, one interesting fact was when I did reboot my machine, it asked me if I wanted
to run the old start program, and I needed to confirm that, that was something I needed
to do.
And I think that is absolutely excellent.
And with that, I'll like to thank my children, young as you've here, who you've done for
being quiet during this episode.
And if you would like to record an episode, if you've got five minutes when the kids are
quiet, or whatever, why don't you do that?
It would be great if we all look forward to hearing some more shows on the HBR network,
time to get more shows on, start recording shows.
Okay, bye.
