Should not choose GL screensavers when no acceleration is available

[Rafał Próchniak]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-desktop

As dapper has no option to disable single xscreensaver hacks, the only way to disable opengl screensavers is to remove xscreensaver-gl package. This package removes ubuntu-desktop, which is undesirable.

In my opninion this "breaks" defualt install on non-accelerated machines (most?), especially on laptops.

And also it's very difficult for an unexperienced user to find a solution. (On the other hand it would be equally difficult for an unexperienced user to add opengl screensavers if they were disabled by default).

So, if you have no hardware opengl (like SiS graphics - many laptops use this) you are left with options like:
- removing ubuntu-desktop
- burning CPU fan
- blank screen
- single screensaver

Another good reason to disable it by default on non-accelerated GL is that these screensaver tend to be CPU intensive with software 3D rendering, so the screensaver becomes a cpu/battery killer.

[Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor)]

We plan to use recommends for a lot of packages in the meta packages. This will hopefully solve this issue.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Oliver, please get this upstream and track for Edgy

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad (joerlend.schinstad-deactivatedaccount)]

Yes, this is important. My Ubuntu setup actually crashes when I load GL screensavers, so if I forget to deactivate screensaver when I boot Ubuntu from CD, then I'll have to reboot.

[kwalo (kwalo)]

Is it possible to disable, or make screen blank, when user chooses to install Ubuntu in safe graphics mode? That's pretty obvious, when we run vesa, there's no accelleration available.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

the right way is to make gnome-screensaver check if GL is available on startup and exclude the screensavers that are linked aginst GL from the selection completely ... and thats actually the plan. so you still have pretty screensavers (unless you choose to blank only) that dont kill your system

[Dan Bishop (danbishop)]

This is REALLY important, every distro I have ever used does this and it either grinds your computer to a hault or locks it completely! Let's be the first to implement it.

[Joakim Larsson (joakim-bildrulle)]

I have too experienced X to crash when turning my back to it and it seems to have to do with the screensavers. I tracked it down in the syslog to be related to the i915 DRM bug "fixed" last year by some Ubunto folks (https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7787) and related to the following error line in syslog:

Sep 7 13:04:24 localhost kernel: [17194357.592000] [drm:i915_wait_irq] *ERROR*
i915_wait_irq: EBUSY -- rec: 377606 emitted: 377609

For a full log: http://bildrulle.nu/tech/ubuntu.html This sounds like regression but might not be related to what you are onto. So where do I file if of interest?

[Paul O'Malley (ompaul-deactivatedaccount)]

Found on a desktop, nvidia card, no accelerated drivers in place.

[michelem (michele-marcucci)]

Same error here and X crash with Edgy Eft (kernel 2.6.17-10)

[boll (bollippo)]

to disable the offending screensaver in ubuntu just remove the execute attribute from the files.

for gnome screensaver:
cd /usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver
sudo chmod -x *

for xscreensaver:
cd /usr/lib/xscreensaver
sudo chmod -x *

both sets of screensavers will not be displayed in the list of available screensavers any more, for any user.