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Though many of the newer hacks take full advantage of the power of modern computers, the age of the project means that some of the older hacks may look dated to modern eyes, as they were originally written for much less powerful computers. The included hacks are highly varied, ranging from simple 2D psychedelia, to 3D demonstrations of complex mathematical principles, to simulations of other computer systems, to re-creations of artifacts and effects from movies. Leading him to quip in 2015, 'If you are not running XScreenSaver on Linux, then it is safe to assume that your screen does not lock.' Display Modes In 2004, Zawinski had written about the architectural decisions made in XScreenSaver with the goal of avoiding this very class of bug,

Those other frameworks have a history of security bugs that allow the screen to be un-locked without a password, e.g., by simply holding a key down until the locker crashes. Those Linux distributions that have replaced XScreenSaver with other screen-locking frameworks have suffered notable security problems. However, in 2011, gnome-screensaver version 3 dropped support for screensavers completely, supporting only simple screen blanking, Īnd as of 2018, Linux Mint's cinnamon-screensaver 4.0.8 no longer supports the XScreenSaver hacks. Earlier versions of these frameworks still depended upon the XScreenSaver collection of screen savers, which is over 90% of the package. In 2011, gnome-screensaver was forked as both mate-screensaver and cinnamon-screensaver. In recent years, some Linux distributions have begun using the gnome-screensaver or kscreensaver screen-blanking frameworks by default instead of the framework included with XScreenSaver. In particular, it does not link against GUI frameworks like GTK or KDE, but uses only raw Xlib for rendering the unlock dialog box. In addition to sandboxing the display modes, the XScreenSaver daemon links with as few libraries as possible.

And to allow the X11-based hacks to run natively on iOS and Android, XScreenSaver also contains an implementation of the X11 API in terms of OpenGL ES 1.0.

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To allow the OpenGL 1.3-based hacks to run natively on iOS and Android systems, which only support OpenGL ES, XScreenSaver contains an implementation of the OpenGL 1.3 API built in top of OpenGL ES 1.0 ('jwzgles').

To allow the X11-based hacks to run natively on macOS and iOS, XScreenSaver contains a complete implementation of the X11 API built on top of Cocoa ('jwxyz').

Rather than forking the code-base and re-writing the hacks to target different platforms, XScreenSaver contains a number of compatibility layers. About half of them use the X11 API, and about half use the OpenGL 1.3 API. It also means that a third-party screen saver can be written in any language or with any graphics library, so long as it is capable of rendering onto an externally provided window.įor historical and portability reasons, the included hacks are all written in ANSI C. This means that a programming error in one of the graphical display modes cannot compromise the screen locker itself (e.g., a crash in a display mode will not unlock the screen). This is an important security feature, in that the display modes are sandboxed into a separate process from the screen locking framework. The display modes (termed 'hacks' from the historical usage ' display hack') are each stand-alone programs. The XScreenSaver daemon is responsible for detecting idle-ness, blanking and locking the screen, and launching the display modes. The author considers Microsoft to be 'a company with vicious, predatory, anti-competitive business practices' Īnd says that, as one of the original authors of Netscape Navigator, he holds a 'personal grudge' against Microsoft because of its behavior during the First Browser War. There is no official version for Microsoft Windows, and the developer discourages anyone from porting it. On Android systems, the XScreenSaver display modes work either as normal screen savers (which Android sometimes refers to as 'Daydreams') or as live wallpapers. On iOS systems, XScreenSaver is a stand-alone app that can run any of the hacks full-screen. On Macintosh systems, XScreenSaver works with the built-in macOS screen saver. On those systems, there are several packages: one for the screen-saving and locking framework, and two or more for the display modes, divided somewhat arbitrarily.

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The free software and open-source Unix-like operating systems running the X Window System (such as Linux and FreeBSD) use XScreenSaver almost exclusively.

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