Kubuntu/KDE GL Screensavers Not Filling Display

Original date: September 6, 2006 5:33 PM by sonnik

Yesterday I ranted about some detractors from the overall performance of the Kubuntu Linux distribution. There was one issue I forgot to mention. It may seem petty, but it's about screensavers. Linux always has the most appealing screen savers, so it would be nice if they operate properly. Read On.

Mentioned in this bug report, it seems as though i810 has a problem displaying some GL screen savers. Specifically the screensavers only display on about 1/3 (I've seen it described as 1/2 or 2/5 also). I would guess that this tends to impact displays with non standard resolutions, such as widescreen laptops. Early reports were made of this in late 2005. The screensaver folks may think this is a problem for the video driver folks, and vice versa.

The problem can be resolved, as discussed in the thread, by installing a few other packages. Essentially, I installed all the xscreensaver-gl packages and a KDE specific package that seems to be responsible for making X screensavers play nice with KDE. I also installed a package of rss-glx screensavers. If you install all packages that refer to "xscreensaver" and "KDE" with "screensaver" in the description, you'll have some redundant GL screensavers install that do in fact work.