A screenshot of gnome-screensaver prior to GNOME 3 |
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| Developer(s) | GNOME developers |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.2.2 (16 November 2011)[1] [±] |
| Preview release | 3.3.3 (23 December 2011)[2] [±] |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Screensaver |
| License | GPL |
| Website | live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver |
gnome-screensaver is the GNOME project's official screen blanking and locking framework. On some GNOME-based Linux distributions, it is used instead of the framework that is a part of XScreenSaver.
On these systems, the screen savers themselves still come from the XScreenSaver collection. gnome-screensaver is just the user interface.
The gnome-screensaver interface is designed for improved integration with a GNOME desktop, including themeability, language support, and Human interface guidelines compliance.
Compared to the front end included with XScreenSaver, gnome-screensaver has a simplified interface but less customizability. For instance, users may not select which screensavers to select at random – either only one is selected or the program randomly selects from the whole list. In addition, the inability to configure individual screensavers and the developers' response to this issue has been criticized by some users.[3] It also lacks a setting to control cycling through different screensavers.
In recognition that the situation had turned into an organizational deadlock, and that the controversy on such an apparently simple but highly visible issue was severely damaging the image of the whole GNOME project, the GNOME 3 version of gnome-screensaver has been drastically simplified, supporting only screen blanking but no graphical screen savers.[4]