Bug 57572

Summary: ability to deactivate screensavers with "random" module
Product: [Unmaintained] kscreensaver Reporter: Justin Sheckler <justin>
Component: generalAssignee: kscreensaver bugs tracking <kscreensaver-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: andyreif, bluelightning, carl, jaw.wings, jjm, kenyon, martin.tlustos, mgraesslin, periliocastrol, toddrme2178, tpr
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Slackware   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Justin Sheckler 2003-04-22 21:21:43 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.1.1)
Installed from:    Slackware Packages
OS:          Linux

My machine at work is slow (PIII/500Mhz) and lacks hardware 3D.  So, GLX screensavers don't work very well, if at all.  (Mesa is so slow on my machine that certain modules, like FlipScreen, can lock up the keyboard entirely and prevent me from entering my password.)  It would be great to be able to choose only certain screensavers when I use the "Random" module, which is more like the way XScreensaver works.
Comment 1 Chris Howells 2003-04-23 10:10:05 UTC
Agreed, I would quite like this as well so I'll think about implementing this :)
Comment 2 Beat Fasel 2003-05-28 00:47:47 UTC
I agree too that it would be nice to be able to select screensavers 
individually when using the random mode. This would be not only handy for 
disactivating computationally intensive screensavers, but also screensavers 
not enjoyed by the user.  
Maybe it could be achieved with a similar interface as used by the gtk 
xscreensaver setup menu that appears when configuring the xscreensaver package 
within the screensaver list (i.e. check buttons in front of each screensaver 
entry). 
 
Thanks, 
Beat 
Comment 3 mischa 2003-07-20 18:20:19 UTC
Unfortunately, I don't have too much more to add than a simple "Me too!"

My preference is to see random screensavers, but as already pointed out, there
are some screensavers that run slowly on given hardware, and not every user
enjoys every screensaver option.

I'll also agree that a similar interface to Xscreensaver (checkboxes per each
screensaver) would probably be the most familiar to people and cause the least
confusion.

Additionally, it seems that users might want to select how often the random
screensaver changes (i.e., every time the screensaver is called or every x minutes).

Mischa.
Comment 4 Chris Howells 2003-11-20 22:19:39 UTC
*** Bug 65708 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Maksim Orlovich 2003-12-16 15:52:06 UTC
*** Bug 70588 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Stephen Anthony 2003-12-16 20:46:58 UTC
I coded this exact functionality for KDE 3.1cvs, but it wasn't accepted for reasons that I don't understand.

I still have the patch (approx. 20K), and although it probably won't compile cleanly, there should be very few changes required to get it up to speed.

I modelled it after xscreensaver, so there is a dropdown box to select between using one screensaver or multiple random savers.  When in random mode, there is a checkbox next to each saver.  The actual random screensaver itself should be removed.

Have a look at the following links:

http://www.cs.mun.ca/~stephena/single.png
http://www.cs.mun.ca/~stephena/multiple.png

Send me an email if you want the diff.

Steve A.
Comment 7 Stephan Binner 2004-05-28 18:02:16 UTC
What reason was given? And, you can also attach your patch to this report.
Comment 8 carl 2004-05-28 19:04:05 UTC
I suppose if you like every single screen saver that ships with KDE than the
reason would not be obvious.  I think it would be nice for one to have the
ability to randomly choose a screen saver from a subset of all of them.

About the patch, I'm sorry.  I was not aware that I needed to have fixed the
problem and generated a patch from the fix in order to submit a wishlist item.

Quoting Stephan Binner <binner@kde.org>:

> ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
> You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
> You are a voter for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
>       
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57572      
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------- Additional Comments From binner kde org  2004-05-28 18:02 -------
> What reason was given? And, you can also attach your patch to this report.
> 
> 


Comment 9 Chris Howells 2004-08-27 22:23:01 UTC
*** Bug 81193 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 h 2005-10-07 21:29:58 UTC
please implement this. there are tons of cool screensavers for kde now and it is very hard to pick only one. i can't use random because there are also many i don't like. and deinstalling all the unwanted screensavers is a solution that is rude to the computer (and other users of the box if applicable).
Comment 11 David Laban 2006-01-31 02:00:55 UTC
Just a thought:

If this feature is implemented, I thought of an extension to it: The option to be told which screensaver was last playing. That way, you can quickly remove bad screensavers from the list if they irk you.
Comment 12 Mathew Hennessy 2006-02-11 22:05:57 UTC
Wow, this is almost 3 years old!

/me too please!
Comment 13 Tristan Miller 2006-05-04 06:50:47 UTC
I should add that now that KDE groups screensavers in a tree list, the deactivation feature should also use a tree list.  This will make it easy to enable or disable entire categories of screensavers.
Comment 14 Oswald Buddenhagen 2007-05-18 23:28:29 UTC
*** Bug 139532 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Todd 2009-01-18 18:35:13 UTC
Wow, old bug.  I would really like to see this as well.  
Comment 16 Emilio 2010-02-24 00:03:20 UTC
I think it would be a very useful idea and I see it is quite old. I just would like to now if it could be possible in KDE 4.5

Thank you very much
Comment 17 Oswald Buddenhagen 2012-09-18 07:59:03 UTC
*** Bug 253026 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 Oswald Buddenhagen 2012-09-18 07:59:11 UTC
*** Bug 306968 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 Jonathan Marten 2012-09-21 12:58:32 UTC
Patch submitted for review at https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/106524/
Comment 20 Martin Tlustos 2014-05-08 14:45:09 UTC
*** Bug 293147 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 21 Martin Flöser 2015-01-23 09:13:07 UTC
The screen locker architecture changed with Plasma 5. The classic screen savers are no longer supported. The 4.x series won't see any further feature development, so this feature request won't be implemented as it doesn't apply to our current version any more.

I want to thank you for your feature suggestion and I'm sorry that we were not able to provide the requested feature before we retired the affected component. I'm especially sorry that this feature didn't make it although it had a patch.