April 21, 2013
Screensavers and Electricsheep
I had planned on posting some math related thing last month, but I guess I never got around to finishing it. So here's what I've got in store for today. Three links for setting up XScreenSaver and while there is a bit of information from each of these articles that are required for them to work elsewhere.
The GNOME Screensaver is a bane to whatever fun you could be having with your machine when you aren't really at your machine. That is to say, as much as you love to save the environment, sometimes it's OK to build a fire. Thus is the case with XScreenSaver.
First up, Chris Hoffman published this article for adding screensavers back onto Ubuntu 12.04, because as much as a black screen saves energy, you still pine for flying toasters. I would highly recommend that you DO NOT USE THE RANDOM SCREENSAVER SETTING! Pick one screensaver because there are a few that could still crash. Thus, I would suggest not having any important files open when you try out today's hack. Might I recommend Electric Sheep?
When you are done installing XScreenSaver, install ElectricSheep using these instructions provided by Alin "Andrew" Andrei for How to get Electric Sheep to Work with XScreenSaver.
Finally, here's where my part comes in. When you get both of these set up, instead of using that line in Andrew's instructions, which will show text on the screen, use this line to get ElectricSheep added to ~/.xscreensaver. Remember that it goes at the end of the list of the screensavers not at the end of the file!
GL: electricsheep --root 1 2> /dev/null \n\
~/.xscreensaverI'm trying to remember what the commands atre to make the Lock Screen look pretty, have Electric Sheep use a random seed, and most importantly not have XScreenSaver show standard error messages (which are not always about errors) whenever the screensaver runs or if you decide not to log in. I'll update this post later.
