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Since in Ubuntu 12.04 there weren't integrated screen savers (btw, why?), I looked for a tutorial online and installed XScreensaver 5.15. The problem is that it won't start the sccreen savers until I've actually opened the preferences window - then it says

The XScreenSaver daemon doesn't seem to be running on ":0". Launch it now?

If I click OK, it then works.

Is there a way to get it to run when the computer starts up? A screen saver is kindah useless if you have to tell it to start every time you turn your computer on...

Here's my XScreenSaver entry in Startup Apps: enter image description here

Sean Bone
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  • Ubuntu uses gnome-screensaver for the Unity desktop environment, not xscreensaver (correct me if I'm wrong). If you want to run xscreensaver nevertheless, you have to put it in your autostart list (that is probably somewhere in the system menu, but I don't have any Ubuntu machine nearby, so I can't tell...). You can also edit the session .desktop file (you'll find numerous guides that suggest this, yet it affects all users, so I advice against it - and session files are probably not protected configuration, so they'll be overwritten on updates). – soulsource Jul 16 '13 at 06:48
  • This question may be helpful. – Danatela Jul 16 '13 at 07:01
  • @Danatela I have tried the answer to the question you linked, but it still doesn't change anything. – Sean Bone Jul 17 '13 at 06:01
  • Sorry, I gave wrong link. Here is the manual. Did you set up an entry in Startup Applications? – Danatela Jul 17 '13 at 06:16
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    @Danatela yes, I did set up an entry in Startup apps: xscreensaver -nosplash – Sean Bone Jul 18 '13 at 08:25
  • But it still doesn't work... – Sean Bone Jul 18 '13 at 08:26
  • Then add screenshot of your Xscreensaver entry. And give output of ps -A | grep xscreensaver. – Danatela Jul 18 '13 at 10:09
  • what do you mean "give output of ps -A | grep xscreensaver"? – Sean Bone Jul 19 '13 at 06:18
  • @Danatela sorry, not really an expert... – Sean Bone Jul 19 '13 at 06:19
  • Run the command in terminal and copy-paste it's output here. And also run xscreensaver -nosplash and see what it writes to you. – Danatela Jul 19 '13 at 06:44
  • was this ever resolved? I cant seem to fix it – Kalamalka Kid Mar 29 '14 at 05:20
  • Hi there - I had everything working up through 13.10, but now in 14.04 the startup entry is no longer working. The Output from the thing @Danatela asked for (for me) is: " 11317 ? 00:00:00 xscreensaver" Don't know if that helps – Kibi Apr 29 '14 at 09:52
  • Still looking for an answer? – Seth May 18 '14 at 04:46
  • @Seth yes - I never got it to work. I'll hae another look at it, maybe I can get it to work now. – Sean Bone May 19 '14 at 14:35
  • PS: also I don't believe "[...] was only relevant to a very specific period of time. It's off-topic as it's unlikely to help future readers" is really true: other people have had the same issue. – Sean Bone May 19 '14 at 14:38
  • try this on startup applications: bash -c 'while true;do if ! pgrep xscreensaver;then xscreensaver -nosplash;fi; sleep 1;done', basically it will keep trying to run it even if it fails to, so it will kick in! – Aquarius Power May 29 '14 at 22:43

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