20 thoughts on - XScreenSaver

• It appears that the spec file actually patches xscreensaver to change the time bomb date to be the build time, so you’d only need to rebuild it to make it stop. (The EPEL maintainer could too)

  https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/xscreensaver/blob/epel7/f/xscreensaver.spec#_440

  JWZ would prefer people not patch out the time bomb (and stop calling the time bomb a time bomb, too bad). He’d rather people not use xscreensaver at all. He probably is annoyed about getting bug reports from users of distros that have an out of date version, but I have to say his solution is pretty caustic.

  —
  Jonathan Billings

• This is a big change, so it must be prompted by substantial reason. Would you mind share it: what about slackware was that bad to prompt it.

  Thanks a lot for your insights!

  Valeri

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• Le 08/04/2018 à 16:25, Valeri Galtsev a écrit :

  At the time of the change, about a year ago, I’ve written a short blog text (in english) about the subject.

  https://blog.microlinux.fr/slackware-CentOS/

  Cheers,

  Niki

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  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
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• Le 08/04/2018 à 13:54, Nicolas Kovacs a écrit :

  I just got the following response from Jamie Zawinski, the XScreenSaver developer:

  “Yes, your distro sucks, and I wish they would stop redistributing my software if they refuse to keep it up to date.”

  He apparently had the same reaction with the Debian guys.

  Niki

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  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
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• Yeah that is pretty classic JWZ… well except he didn’t say something anatomically impossible. I think he may have mellowed a bit. I will see if the EPEL version can be updated. Also to make sure that he doesn’t get the bugs since he doesn’t want them :)

  Stephen J Smoogen.

• Le 08/04/2018 à 21:47, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

  Thanks very much. Judging from the follow-up mail I just got, the guy’s just your average drama queen who believes his software is more critical to any Linux system than the kernel, the libc and the shell combined.

  Yeah, updating the package in EPEL would be nice.

  Cheers,

  Niki

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  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
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• Le 08/04/2018 à 21:47, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

  This mister JWZ just blogged and tweeted loudly about it, and it looks like he hates CentOS as much as he hates Debian. Coming from a guy whose blog looks like a russian porn site from around 1998, I guess this is some form of praise.

  https://www.jwz.org/blog/2018/04/looks-like-todays-the-day-that-CentOS-users-lose-their-god-damned-minds/

  I’m a bit tired of these drama queens.

  Niki

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  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
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• Yikes, that’s a good baseline for drama. That twitter profile picture should be a big enough red flag

  Archived for posterity: https://web.archive.org/web/20180408204046/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2018/04/looks-like-todays-the-day-that-CentOS-users-lose-their-god-damned-minds/ && https://web.archive.org/web/20180408204243/https:/twitter.com/jwz/status/983061118863032320

  R. S. Tyler Schroder

  —–Original Message—–
  From: CentOS [mailto:CentOS-bounces@CentOS.org] On Behalf Of Nicolas Kovacs Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2018 4:28 PM
  To: CentOS@CentOS.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] XScreenSaver

  Le 08/04/2018 à 21:47, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

  This mister JWZ just blogged and tweeted loudly about it, and it looks like he hates CentOS as much as he hates Debian. Coming from a guy whose blog looks like a russian porn site from around 1998, I guess this is some form of praise.

  https://www.jwz.org/blog/2018/04/looks-like-todays-the-day-that-CentOS-users-lose-their-god-damned-minds/

  I’m a bit tired of these drama queens.

  Niki

  —
  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables 7, place de l’église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : info@microlinux.fr Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32

• He apparently doesn’t understand what his own software does, either:

  “They had to CLICK OK on a dialog box after they rebooted!!”

  The dialog box comes up when you log in, not when you reboot, and there is no OK in the box to click on; it just goes away on its own.

• I think you can use the –no-splash switch.

  https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/man1.html

  There’s probably also a config setting in .xscreensaver.

  But it was probably worth seeking a patch just to get that classic response. ;-)

  –keith

• Le 09/04/2018 à 00:33, Keith Keller a écrit :

  No, there’s no configuration setting. And no way to turn it off. Patrick Volkerding wrote about this some time ago in Slackware’s ChangeLog.txt, explaining he decided to upgrade this single piece of software mid-release just to get rid of the nagging warning screen.

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• Once upon a time, Nicolas Kovacs said:

  It’s Open Source – patching to remove such a nag is legal and a service to the users.

  It’s a screensaver program – how many updates does it need anyway? If it is just updates to add more fancy animations, there is zero reason to demand people upgrade.

• Not even –no-splash? That option shows up right on JWZ’s site.

  –keith

• Le 09/04/2018 à 03:04, Chris Adams a écrit :

  Here’s the exact response I got from the developer after asking for help:

  “I am not going to go out of my way to help you run security-critical software that is YEARS out of date. In fact, I consider it my responsibility to do exactly the opposite.

  It’s not rocket science: someone on your distro’s team just needs to update it ONCE A YEAR. If that is too onerous for them, then I’d prefer that they not distribute my software at all.

  If you don’t like the way XScreenSaver works, then don’t run it. I hear GNOME Screensaver is a thing that also exists. See how that works out for you instead.”

  I didn’t know a screensaver was that critical.

  Niki

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  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
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• Hello,

  Years ago I was using xscreensaver with –no-splash and had no problem with it. But, I must admit that I gave up with xscreensaver just because I was using the blank screen feature + power management settings, and the screensaver service provided by GNOME is just equivalent and more simple to get (anything but a blank screen is NOT a screen or energy *saver*, it’s an entertainment). I presume KDE has its own too, so, with regards to the feature, we really don’t need xscreensaver and the whole discussion here and without the author is a loss of time. Even to the OP of this thread, I’d not recommend using xscreensaver for school computers administration, he’s losing time and energy.

  Regards,

• And that just goes to show that he knows not what CentOS is – since clearly he doesn’t realise that it is NOT distributed by CentOS at all. I suspect RH don’t touch it for this very reason.

  I tend to go along with Gnome when it comes to screen savers: they serve no purpose what so ever other than eye candy. Don’t bother with them. Just configure Gnome to lock the session and blank the screen so the monitor turns off.

  If your corporate masters require uplifting messages to be shown on all the screens, then require them to provide you with the resources to sort out the software.

  P.

• It’s critical in that XScreenSaver deals with locking the screen/dealing with passwords. I believe the fancy animation bits are separate.

• xscreensaver is security critical for the following reasons:
  1. Several of the screensavers take user input which may not be the main user. If the software has a security problem. those plugins could overwrite the users data.
  2. If the user is expecting that the xscreensaver is locking out a user and it does not then that is security related
  3. The way X works is that every X application can listen to all mouse and keyboard actions. This also has a security context.

  For many sites, any of these make Xscreensaver into a high security item. It makes perfect sense from jwz’s point of view because several times something ‘simple’ in an xscreensaver code has turned into a meltdown somewhere. And the fact that people email him before emailing the EPEL maintainer or opening a bugzilla about it says his time is better served saying “not my problem mate.”

• Thanks, Stephen, for returning the sanity to the World!

  Valeri

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• Le 08/04/2018 à 14:53, Jonathan Billings a écrit :
  I just rebuilt XScreenSaver from the EPEL SRPM, and the annoying popup disappeared indeed. I’ll just put the resulting packages in my Yum repo, along with a reminder to rebuild them once a year.

  Thanks!

  Niki

  —
  Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
  7, place de l’église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : info@microlinux.fr Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32