XScreenSaver

a collection of
free screen savers
for X11 and MacOS

by Jamie Zawinski
and many others.

5.0501-Mar-2008
  • New hacks, cubicgrid, hypnowheel, and lcdscrub (which isn't really a screen saver).
  • Updates to m6502 and gears.
  • Fixed double-buffering problems in cubestorm and noof.
  • Better handling of horizontal scroll wheels.
  • Attempt to work around latest Xinerama braindamage: if the server reports overlapping screens, use the largest non-overlapping rectangles available.
  • Don't warning about receipt of bogus ClientMessages, since Gnome's just never going to stop sending those.
  • Worked around MacOS 10.5 perl bug that caused the text-displaying hacks to fail on some systems.
  • Hopefully fixed font-related System Preferences crashes in MacOS savers.
  • The recent PAM changes broke the ``Caps Lock'' warning in the password dialog, the failed login warnings, and syslogging. Fixed all that.

5.0413-Nov-2007
  • Fixed a possible crash in the unlock dialog (more fallout from the recent PAM changes...)
  • New hacks, moebiusgears, abstractile, and lockward.
  • Rewrote gears to use better (involute) gear models, and to be more random.
  • Minor updates to cwaves, voronoi, deco, glcells, rd-bomb, fireworkx and webcollage.
  • pong can now display the current time as the score.
  • xmatrix -mode pipe works better.
  • Minor tweaks for compilation on MacOS 10.5.0.

5.0317-Jul-2007
  • New hacks, cwaves, glcells, m6502, and voronoi.
  • Minor fixes to bsod.
  • Fixed possible crash with PAM USB-dongle auth.
  • Updated webcollage to track recent Google Images and Flickr changes.

5.0220-Apr-2007
  • Reworked PAM code to support fingerprint readers, etc.
  • Ported 'webcollage' to OSX.
  • Added OSX 10.2 and 10.3 kernel panics to bsod.
  • Fixed a Xinerama crash when changing the screen count.
  • New blobbier mirrorblob.
  • Minor updates to lisa, bsod, ifs, hypertorus, polytopes, circuit, endgame, crackberg, flipflop, flipscreen3d, fliptext, and carousel.
  • Enabled multi-threaded OpenGL on OSX.

5.0118-Sep-2006
  • Backed out recent locale-related changes, since they broke far more things than they fixed.
  • Fail gracefully with ridiculously small window sizes.
  • xflame and flag ignore bitmap option on MacOS.
  • speedmine prefs work on MacOS.
  • Better explosions in boxed.
  • More dynamic motion in sproingies.
  • More options in flipflop.
  • Minor updates to topblock.
  • Various other minor fixes.

5.0023-May-2006
  • Ported to MacOS X! (10.4.0 or newer)
  • API change: instead of providing a single screenhack() function that does not return, screen savers using the screenhack.h framework must now provide ``init'' and ``draw one frame'' functions instead. All bundled savers have been updated; third-party patches will need work.
  • All image-loading happens asynchronously.
  • xscreensaver-getimage-file caches the contents of the image directory for a few hours, so consecutive runs won't have to re-list the whole directory tree.
  • New hacks, topblock and glschool.
  • Removed xteevee (superceded by xanalogtv).
  • Added variable-sized puzzle pieces to jigsaw.
  • Changes to the defaults and command-line options of many hacks to make the .xml files more consistent.
  • Reap zombies in glslideshow and carousel.
  • sonar works without setuid on OSX (dgram icmp).
  • xmatrix -mode pipe displays the text of a subprocess.
  • endgame has higher resolution chess-piece models.
  • webcollage takes a -directory option to get images from a local directory.
  • The RPM spec file no longer auto-restarts xscreensaver when a new version is installed. Restart it manually.

4.2408-Feb-2006
  • New versions of cube21, glsnake, celtic.
  • Backed out a DPMS-related patch that cause desktop flickering with some X servers.
  • Fixed startup crash in getgroups() when running setuid.
  • Default to not displaying stderr on the saver window.
  • Fixed bad free() in ``Documentation'' button.
  • Don't try to run hacks that aren't installed.
  • Minor fixes to various XML config files and man pages.

4.2321-Oct-2005
  • New hacks, glhanoi, cube21, timetunnel, juggler3d, and celtic.
  • New versions of tangram, webcollage, hypertorus, polytopes, and ripples.
  • sonar is now quiet about unresolvable hosts.
  • Minor corrections to BASIC code in apple2.
  • xscreensaver-demo now provides an RPM clue when none of the hacks seem to be installed.
  • Don't install ant by default, since there is some Java tool of that name, which was causing confusion. And also it's boring.
  • Made screen grabbing work again on MacOS 10.4.2.
  • No longer prints bogus warnings about ClientMessages intended for the window manager.
  • Ignore unprintable characters in passwd entry field.
  • Fixed yet another cross-host-display image-loading endian problem.
  • xscreensaver-command -watch and -time now work on 64-bit machines.

4.2222-Jun-2005
  • Fixed a bug in the new mouse-motion code that caused the screen to never blank on multi-head non-Xinerama systems. Oops.
  • New hacks, interaggregate, antmaze, tangram, and crackberg.
  • Minor tweaks to fiberlamp, ifs, slidescreen, zoom, sonar, fireworkx, whirlwindwarp, bubble3d, and rd-bomb.
  • Added motion blur to blinkbox.
  • bsod now includes Longhorn's ``RSOD'', and OS/2.
  • Fixed -wireframe usage in most hacks and man pages.

4.2120-Mar-2005
  • New hack: fliptext.
  • Changed default configure installation directories: /usr/bin/ for xscreensaver, etc.; /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/ for hacks; /usr/share/xscreensaver/config/ for xml files.
  • All the text-manipulating screen savers can have their text source configured via xscreensaver-demo now.
  • xscreensaver.spec now builds three RPMs: base (no hacks); extras (2d hacks); and gl-extras.
  • Added -program and -front option to gltext.
  • Added -shells to molecule.
  • Fixed text-alpha glitch in carousel.
  • New pacman: the ghosts can be killed now.
  • Fixed a bug in screen-grabbing GL hacks where images would be tiled instead of scaled on machines that can't do large textures.
  • webcollage can hit Flickr now.
  • New (rewritten) implementation of ifs.
  • The unlock dialog can be made to have a ``New Login'' button that will run gdmflexiserver. Experimental!
  • Fixed non-ASCII display bug in starwars.
  • Configure finds a default for imageDirectory.
  • ``xscreensaver-command -lock'' now works even if in ``screensaver disabled'' mode.
  • If a bad password is typed while CapsLock is on, the unlock dialog says ``CapsLock?'' instead of ``Sorry''.
  • Mouse motion only counts as activity if the mouse moved more than 10 pixels (so the screen won't unblank every time you bump your desk.)
  • New mode option ``random-same'': if you have multiple monitors, this will run the same randomly chosen hack on each screen, instead of different ones on each.

4.2023-Feb-2005
  • New hacks, fiberlamp, boing, boxfit, and carousel.
  • Rewrote glslideshow again: should be faster now.
  • Sped up loading of images in GL programs.
  • starwars uses texture-mapped fonts now.
  • New bsod modes: tru64, hppa, and nvidia.
  • Updates to webcollage, juggle, pinion, fireworkx, sonar, extrusion, substrate, and pong.

4.1916-Dec-2004
  • New hacks, substrate, intermomentary, fireworkx, and pinion.
  • New version of flow.
  • Made /proc/interrupts work again on Linux 2.6.
  • Made analogtv not hog the CPU.
  • Made analogtv-based hacks work properly on PPC/ARM.
  • Fixed a bad memory leak in piecewise.
  • Minor updates to sonar, molecule, glmatrix, galaxy, and webcollage.
  • Removed support for GTK 1.x (everyone uses 2.x now.)

4.1814-Aug-2004
  • Oops, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

4.1714-Aug-2004
  • New hacks, anemotaxis and memscroller.
  • Fixed a bad bug that caused vidwhacker to never die.
  • Fixed normals and lighting in polyhedra.
  • Don't reuse the window when changing hacks (to work around bugs in some GL implementations.)
  • Made xscreensaver-getimage-file skip thumbnail-sized images.
  • Fixed endian problem in barcode on non-x86.
  • Updates to webcollage, apple2, fuzzyflakes, atunnel, and pacman.
  • Timing tweaks to bubble3d, bouncingcow, engine, gltext, lavalite, molecule, spotlight, sballs, boxed, blinkbox, and circuit.
  • Configure updates for Fedora core 2 / xorg 6.7.0.
  • Compile without warnings under gcc 3.3.3.
  • I give up: don't blank or lock the screen if we can't get a keyboard grab. In that case, both choices are bad.

4.1612-May-2004
  • New hacks, polyhedra, fuzzyflakes, antinspect, and providence.
  • Minor updates to webcollage, bsod, endgame, antspotlight, xmatrix, and glmatrix.
  • Added support for the RANDR (Resize and Rotate) extension to detect when the size of the desktop has been changed while xscreensaver is already running.
  • Possibly-futile attempt to work around ``rdesktop'' focus/grab idiocy.
  • Made xscreensaver-getimage -file still work even if imageDirectory is unset.
  • Convert Latin1 to ASCII in starwars and phosphor (since the GLUT font only has ASCII glyphs.)
  • Fixed randomization in noof.
  • Added ``GetViewPortIsFullOfLies'' preference to work around longstanding XFree86 bug #421.
  • Made sonar subnet pinging work properly on bigendian machines (e.g., PPC.)

4.1526-Feb-2004
  • New hacks, wormhole, mismunch, noof, and pacman.
  • phosphor and apple2 include vt100 emulators now: this means you can do ``phosphor -program top'', or can use either program as an xterm replacement: ``apple2 -text -fast -program 'xemacs -nw'''.
  • analogtv (and related) fill the screen better.
  • The '-gradient' option works in atlantis now.
  • Minor updates to blinkbox, queens, endgame, glmatrix, mirrorblob, blocktube, and molecule.
  • Integrated SuSE's ``external passwd helper'' support.
  • Marginally better /tmp handling in various programs.
  • Updated config defaults for xplanet 1.0.3.
  • Portability fixes.

4.1425-Oct-2003
  • New hacks, fontglide, apple2, xanalogtv, pong, gleidescope, mirrorblob, and blinkbox.
  • New version of glsnake (with many more models.)
  • Another Windows crash in bsod; also HVX/GCOS6/TPS6.
  • New version of endgame.
  • Screen grabbing works on MacOS X.
  • Various minor fixes.

4.1307-Sep-2003
  • On Xinerama systems, xscreensaver now runs one hack on each monitor (just like in ``real'' multi-head mode) instead of running one hack stretching across all the screens. Note that for this to work with any 3rd party screensavers, they must update their ``vroot.h'' file.
  • webcollage and vidwhacker display images using xscreensaver-getimage now.
  • Added ljlatest script for use with starwars and phosphor.

4.1214-Aug-2003
  • New GL hacks, flipflop, antspotlight, and polytopes.
  • Added VMS to bsod.
  • Compile without warnings in ``gcc -pedantic''.
  • Updates to webcollage and queens.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause PAM to hang.

4.1123-Jun-2003
  • New hacks, hypertorus, cubestorm, glknots, blocktube, and glmatrix.
  • Updates to cloudlife, engine, xmatrix, and sonar.
  • Rewrote glslideshow: it should work on somewhat wimpier video cards now.
  • Various portability tweaks.

4.1020-May-2003
  • New hacks, cloudlife and klein.
  • Added Apple ][+, HPUX, and OS/390 sessions to BSOD.
  • Added some Matrix Reloaded text to xmatrix.
  • Updates to webcollage, eruption, jigglypuff, metaballs, and endgame.
  • Completely ignore the memoryLimit setting now, since it was still causing people GL grief.
  • Various minor fixes.

4.0917-Mar-2003
  • New hacks, flyingtoasters, bouncingcow, jigglypuff, and glslideshow.
  • More models in engine.
  • Rewrote xscreensaver-getimage to remove reliance on external image loaders (xv, chbg, xloadimage, etc.) and to reduce flicker when loading files.
  • Made gflux and flipscreen3d be mouse-spinnable.

4.0818-Feb-2003
  • New hacks, atunnels and piecewise.
  • Physics improvement in fluidballs.
  • Various fixes for XDarwin systems (X11 on MacOS X.)
  • Added -clock option to barcode.
  • Minor fixes to endgame, flurry, flipscreen3d, and gflux.

4.0703-Feb-2003
  • New hacks, flurry, metaballs, eruption, popsquares, and barcode.
  • Minor updates to maze for high density mazes.
  • Added double buffering to fluidballs and whirlygig.
  • Bug fixes for running xscreensaver to a remote XFree86 display (which nobody would ever do...)
  • Updated webcollage (faster Alta Vista searching.)
  • Updated glplanet so the sun sets in the west.
  • Updated sproingies with smooth, unsegmented surfaces.
  • Fixed Perl version-sensitivity in xscreensaver-getimage-file.
  • Fixed GTK2 scrolling bug in xscreensaver-demo.

4.0623-Oct-2002
  • New hack, glblur (disabled by default, since it requires fast OpenGL texture support.)
  • New hack, halftone.
  • Updates to endgame, queens, bumps, glplanet, engine, and circuit.
  • New version of menger that uses far fewer polygons.
  • Fixed minor bug in critical that could cause some bogus X servers to crash.
  • Better labels in molecule: the labels now appear to be attached to the atoms, instead of floating in front of the whole scene.
  • Fixed bug that could rarely cause GL hacks to fail to double-buffer (causing intermittent flickering.)
  • Fixed a relative-URL-parsing bug in webcollage.
  • Fixed a bug that (sometimes) caused the window manager close box to kill xscreensaver-demo with a crash instead of a graceful exit.
  • Updated xscreensaver.pam to the Red Hat 7.3 way.
  • More Gnome2-related configure crap.
  • Updated to latest config.guess and config.sub.
  • Fixed occasional core dump in distort.
  • Added a Linux fsck failure and kernel panic to bsod.
  • Added MacOS X kernel panic to bsod.
  • Fixed a bug in bsod (all bsod bugs are ironic.)
  • Fixed a bug that caused xscreensaver-gl-helper to print a nonsense visual ID with some versions of printf: this could cause GL programs to display incorrectly (e.g., flickery.)

4.0511-Jun-2002
  • More configure tweaks to try and get things working on systems that both Gtk 1.x and 2.x installed.
  • New hack, endgame.
  • Minor updates to gltext.

4.0431-May-2002
  • Support for GTK 2.x / GNOME 2.x.
  • The configure script will now use pkg-config if you have it, in preference to gtk-config, etc.
  • New hacks, lavalite, queens, and anemone.
  • Minor updates to spheremonics, gltext, xmatrix.
  • You can use the mouse to manually spin most of the GL hacks now (when they are displaying in a window.)
  • Fixed a bug in webcollage (due to recent Alta Vista url changes) that was causing it to try and load incorrect image URLs.
  • Made xscreensaver-getimage use gdk_pixbuf if it is available: this means that those hacks that load images will no longer rely on ``xv'', ``xloadimage'', etc. This will close a race condition that could sometimes cause your desktop background to be changed; and also makes it possible for those programs to operate on image files when running in windowed mode.
  • webcollage can now be used in conjunction with driftnet to display images snooped from your local ethernet instead of obtained from search engines.
  • Added man pages for all the hacks that didn't have them.

4.0311-May-2002
  • New hack, spheremonics.
  • Minor updates to webcollage, cage, moebius, morph3d, boxed, circuit, and helix.
  • pulsar and extrusion can now load texture JPEGs.
  • rubik now does non-square cubes.
  • fluidballs now does various sizes of balls.
  • menger and sierpinski3d now also show polygon counts in -fps mode.
  • molecule displays real subscripts in the formulae.
  • GTK internationalization/localization support.
  • Better detection of the various versions of libxml.
  • Upgraded to autoconf 2.53 (from 2.13.)

4.0218-Mar-2002
  • Plugged a few minor leaks in xscreensaver and xscreensaver-demo.
  • New hacks, cubenetic and fluidballs.
  • Sped up pipes.
  • Fixed sphere projection error in glplanet; installed a better image of earth.
  • Added Win2K and MacOS 1 crashes to bsod.
  • Put back previous (better) version of forest that was accidentially downgraded in the last release.
  • New version of bumps.
  • Made FPS computation in GL hacks more efficient: it will influence the results less, thus resulting in higher (but more accurate) reported frame rates.

4.0124-Feb-2002
  • New hacks: twang, glsnake, boxed, sballs, and glforestfire.
  • New hacks apollonian, euler2d, juggle, polyominoes and thornbird, from xlockmore.
  • Merged recent xlockmore changes into ant, braid, demon, discrete, drift, fadeplot, forest, grav, hopalong, ifs, laser, lightning, lisa, lissie, loop, mountain, penrose, rotor, sierpinski, slip, sphere, spiral, strange, and vines.
  • Fixed the gltext bug that sometimes caused horizontal lines to vanish again. This time for sure.
  • Sped up webcollage by adding a C helper program to replace the PPM pipeline. It also pastes images semi-transparently now.
  • Added support for the gdk_pixbuf library: if this lib is available, then blitspin, xflame, and flag can load GIF, JPEG, and PNG images in addition to XPM and XBM.
  • Fixed a rare race condition where the desktop-grabbing hacks could sometimes leave the screen wedged, if the user moved the mouse exactly when they were grabbing the screen image (it would un-wedge the next time the saver timed out or was activated.)
  • Fixed incorrect colors in the screen-grabbing GL hacks (gflux and flipscreen3d.)
  • Made SIGHUP restart the daemon process (though using xscreensaver-command -restart is still the preferred way.)
  • Tweaks to xspirograph.
  • Minor configure and portability tweaks.

4.0002-Jan-2002
  • Redesigned xscreensaver-demo GUI: it now includes small-preview and per-hack configuration dialogs.
  • Added three new modes of operation: One Screen Saver, Blank Screen, and Don't Blank (in addition to the historical Random Screen Saver).
  • Configure now defaults to installing the hacks in <prefix>/lib/xscreensaver/ instead of <prefix>/bin/. (Most distros already did it this way.)
  • New GL hacks, menger, engine, flipscreen3d.
  • Made sierpinski3d be more colorful.
  • New versions of xmatrix and nerverot.
  • Fixed a bug in starwars that made the font be drawn with thin lines in -root mode.
  • Fixed a bad colormap bug in crystal that could make subsequent hacks malfunction!
  • Made gflux able to grab screen images (-mode grab).
  • Updated webcollage for recent search engine changes.
  • Removed most command-line options to xscreensaver: just edit the ~/.xscreensaver file instead.
  • Improved behavior on multi-screen and Xinerama systems: the mouse now stays on the screen where the user left it, and the password and splash dialogs always appear on the screen that has the mouse.
  • Made the splash dialog use more Gtk-like colors; made it have only two buttons, ``Settings'' and ``Help''.
  • Made sonar understand .ssh/known_hosts2 format files, and be better about stripping out illegal addresses.

3.3425-Oct-2001
  • Turned memoryLimit off by default, sigh. Apparently some versions of the GL libraries (appear to) allocate hundreds of megs for every GL program, so memoryLimit was causing GL programs to malfunction or crash on those systems.
  • Improved fading on TrueColor XFree86 4.1.x systems.
  • New GL hack, circuit.
  • Added fuzz mode to decayscreen.
  • New version of whirlygig.
  • Added links to xplanet and sphereEversion.
  • Fixed rare race condition that could make sonar hang.
  • Fixed potential crash in speedmine.
  • Made xscreensaver-demo not crash when imageDirectory was set to a non-existent directory.
  • Made xscreensaver-getimage-video invoke XawTV's streamer program better.
  • Made phosphor and starwars deal with CR, LF, or CRLF line endings.
  • Changes for Cygwin compilation environments.
  • Made sonar compile on systems that can't ping.
  • Configure changes for HPUX 10.20.
  • Made PAM code work on Red Had 4.2 systems.
  • Made xscreensaver-command -deactivate work when the saver is not active: what that does is reset the idle timer, as if keyboard input had been detected. This was added for the benefit of people writing DVD-playing software: they can now prevent the screensaver from kicking in by sending a -deactivate message once a minute while the movie is playing and not paused.
  • Various minor portability tweaks.

3.3303-Jun-2001
  • New hacks, speedmine and whirlygig.
  • Sped up pyro, made the explosions look a bit better.
  • Added better stars to glplanet and starwars.
  • Many internal changes to webcollage.
  • Some new options to attraction.
  • Minor fix to noseguy to avoid un-erased pixels.
  • Rewrote the screen-eraser effects so that they complete in the same amount of time regardless of how slow your X server is (some of them were glacial on servers with slow blitting.)
  • Fixed a potential free memory reference that could sometimes cause a crash at startup.
  • Possibly fixed a problem that could cause the daemon to crash with an X error. I was never able to reproduce this problem, but I think I might have figured out what caused it.
  • Worked around a problem that caused PAM authentication to fail on some Red Hat 7.x systems.
  • Added a memoryLimit parameter that controls the amount of memory a graphics hack may allocate: if they try to allocate more than this, malloc() will fail (and they will exit or (safely) crash, rather than hogging memory.) Default is 50M.
  • Made gnome-help-browser be the default way to display man pages in xscreensaver-demo, if running on a GNOME system.

3.3216-Apr-2001
  • The image-manipulating hacks (slidescreen, etc.) can now operate on randomly chosen image files from disk, or on frames captured from the system's video input, instead of (or in addition to) manipulating images of the desktop.
  • Rewrote vidwhacker to use the new image-grabbing mechanism.
  • Made fading work on TrueColor XFree86 4.x systems.
  • Fixed a subtle rendering bug in atlantis (the fish were inside out!)
  • Made atlantis have a texture simulating light reflections from the surface of the ocean.
  • Fixed up label placement in molecule.
  • Better color bars in xteevee.
  • Made install-strip not try to strip scripts.

3.3129-Mar-2001
  • Put in more sensible defaults for DPMS, and updated the documentation to reflect the fact that all your DPMS settings are now belong to xscreensaver.
  • Fixed the xscreensaver.spec file so that --force is no longer needed.
  • New versions of rotzoomer and nerverot.
  • Fixed an OSF/1 compilation problem in molecule.

3.3019-Mar-2001
  • New hacks, molecule, dangerball, and rotzoomer.
  • New version of gflux.
  • Made gltext able to display the current time.
  • Fixed a floating-point-precision problem in gltext that sometimes caused horizontal lines to vanish.
  • Removed the -window-id option from the hacks: it never worked right, and was unnecessary.
  • Made the starwars hack use thicker lines, antialias the text, and fade out at the far edge instead of just dropping off.
  • Fixed an SHM segment leak in moire.

3.2913-Feb-2001
  • Better rendering of the new logo.
  • New hack, gltext.
  • Added -planetary option to gears, to draw a different kind of gear system.
  • Made motion and rotation be smoother in gears, glplanet, moebius, rubik, and sierpinski3d.
  • Improved coloration in sierpinski3d.
  • Made the GL hacks react to window size changes.
  • Made most of the GL hacks take a -fps option (like pulsar did), so you can use them to benchmark your 3D hardware.
  • Fixed the previous fix to sonar.
  • Minor fix to nerverot. Made sonar able to ping hosts on DEC OSF1.
  • Eliminated a bogus ``didn't get enough colors'' warning in some of the hacks.

3.2802-Feb-2001
  • New logo for xscreensaver!
  • New hacks, starwars and stonerview.
  • Made the motion of the bouncing ball in stairs be a little less jerky.
  • Made newly-added screenhacks be added to .xscreensaver automatically: if there are hacks in the app-defaults file that are not also in ~/.xscreensaver, they will be added to the end of the list.
  • Redid the Screensaver Options part of the control panel; xscreensaver now lets you configure your DPMS settings.
  • Fixed some Makefile problems with non-GL builds.
  • Fixed detection of MesaGL for version 3.3.
  • Better workaround to Red Hat 7.0's broken gcc.
  • Added Sparc Solaris kernel panic to bsod.

3.2719-Jan-2001
  • New hacks: zoom and whirlwindwarp.
  • Fixed a free-memory-reference bug in sonar.
  • Better error handling when there are no suitable GL visuals.
  • Added diagnostic dialog when xscreensaver-demo is unable to launch xscreensaver (e.g., when running as root.)
  • Fixed a bug that caused screenhack argument changes to be ignored when xscreensaver-demo was running as root (if ``root'' and ``nobody'' have different home directories.)
  • Made the programs default to ``:0'' if $DISPLAY is unset.
  • Made the -verbose output include information about which server extensions were supported at compile time.
  • Worked around Red Hat 7.0's broken gcc 2.96.
  • Updated default delays on the GL hacks to look better on machines with super-fast 3D hardware.
  • Install screensaver-properties-capplet to work around the usual egregious GNOME lossage.

3.2610-Nov-2000
  • Added ``enabled'' checkboxes in the list of hacks in xscreensaver-demo (Gtk version only.)
  • New hacks hyperball, xrayswarm, and gflux.
  • New versions of nerverot, galaxy, and hypercube.
  • Small fixes to phosphor, shadebobs, xflame, and sonar.
  • Added external helper program xscreensaver-gl-helper to figure out which X visual to use for OpenGL programs.
  • Configure updates for XFree86 4.0, and for BSD.
  • Made it be more tolerant of bogus /etc/group files.
  • When installing the PAM config file, first try to just copy an existing ``xdm'' or ``login'' config file, so that xscreensaver does authentication in the same way as the rest of the system.

3.2519-Jul-2000
  • New hack, nerverot.
  • Added BSD kernel panic to bsod.
  • New version of shadebobs.
  • New version of petri.
  • Updated webcollage to handle recent Altavista URL format changes; made it search the AP photo gallery.
  • Revamped command-line options of sonar and made it properly handle subnets.
  • The bubbles hack can now trickle up or down the screen.
  • The xsublim hack can now read its text from programs.
  • Support for GLE version 3 in extrusion.
  • Fixed compilation problems in maze.
  • Fixed a rare crash in flow.
  • Fixes for minor installation problems.

3.2403-Apr-2000
  • Added -ignorant option to maze hack.
  • Updates to critical, bsod, xflame, and flow.
  • Added support for Kerberos 5 (via its Kerberos 4 compatibility layer.)
  • Fixed a bad leak in xteevee.
  • Updated webcollage to handle recent Altavista URL format changes.
  • Removed xscreensaver-demo's Ok and Cancel buttons, since they were confusing people: all changes are now instantanious.
  • Made xscreensaver-demo install itself into the Gnome Control Center.

3.2330-Jan-2000
  • Fixed some misplaced text fields in the Motif version of xscreensaver-demo; fixed a crash in the Gtk version that would happen if the programs list was empty.
  • Fixed a recently-introduced bug in pulsar.
  • Made sierpinski3d use solid tetrahedrons instead of points.
  • Added -trace option to xmatrix.
  • Added new hacks xteevee and xspirograph.

3.2209-Dec-1999
  • Fixed some bugs in xscreensaver-demo.
  • Rewrote the Motif version of xscreensaver-demo to match the new Gtk version.
  • The Athena toolkit is no longer supported.

3.2118-Nov-1999
  • Tweaked the xscreensaver-demo UI (Gtk only.)
  • Fixed a few visual selection bugs. I think the proper GL visual should be used with nVidia systems now.
  • Made the Makefiles obey $install_prefix.
  • Made the xscreensaver.spec file able to generate both GL and non-GL packages simultaneously.

3.2012-Nov-1999
  • Added new hacks ripples and sierpinski3d.
  • Made xscreensaver-command -exit be silent when no screen saver was running (instead of complaining.)
  • Made webcollage and vidwhacker use xloadimage when available (in addition to xli and xv.)
  • Improved memory usage in petri and gave it a hard cap on how much memory it can allocate.
  • Added -watch option to xscreensaver-command.
  • Made xscreensaver-demo come up with the most-recently-run hack selected by default.
  • Rewrote the Gtk version of xscreensaver-demo. It's a lot easier to use now.
  • Extended the format of the programs list in the .xscreensaver file, for the benefit of the new capabilities of xscreensaver-demo. NOTE: you might want to delete your ~/.xscreensaver file and allow it to be re-created! The old one should still work, but xscreensaver-demo won't be as pretty.

3.1930-Oct-1999
  • Fixed gcc dependencies in bumps and ccurve.
  • New hack, extrusion.
  • Some of the web sites that webcollage was using as its sources changed formats; tweaked it to understand the current layouts.
  • Added typeahead in the password dialog: if the screen is locked, and you unlock it by typing a character, that key will be automatically inserted in the password dialog (unless it is Return, Enter, Space, or a non-printing key like Shift.)
  • Made xmatrix take a -small option, since some folks with tiny screens prefer a smaller font.

3.1813-Oct-1999
  • New versions of shadebobs, lmorph, and distort.
  • Added ccurve, blaster, and bumps hacks.
  • Replaced forest hack with a rewritten version.
  • Worked around a Xinerama server bug.
  • Fixed a bug I introduced in 3.10 that caused some hacks to print out superfluous warnings about not having gotten enough colors.
  • Made sproingies obey the -delay option.
  • Fixed a portability bug in shadebobs.
  • Made webcollage and vidwhacker use xli in preference to xv, if it is available.
  • Added a new source of images to webcollage.
  • If running under KDE, xscreensaver will add itself to KDE's list of screensavers (via xscreensaver.kss.)
  • Improved detection of GL libraries.
  • Made the password dialog include the date and time.

3.1715-Jul-1999
  • New version of webcollage -- deals better with corrupted images, and can use an http proxy.
  • New hack, xsublim (run it in the background, rather than adding it to the programs list.)
  • The xscreensaver daemon was leaking a file descriptor each time you edited your .xscreensaver file. Fixed.

3.1623-Jun-1999
  • New version of shadebobs.
  • Improved image selection in webcollage, and sped it up slightly.
  • Made configure find the right version of perl.
  • Rewrote the CGI part of webcollage.
  • make clean was deleting some things it shouldn't.
  • Fixed a typo in the default programs list.

3.1520-Jun-1999
  • Added webcollage and shadebobs hacks.
  • Added a -stdout arg to vidwhacker so that it can be used in a pipeline.
  • Made petri use less memory.

3.1411-Jun-1999
  • Various improvements to the Gtk port.
  • Turned off PAM by default on Solaris, since PAM seems generally to be misconfigured out-of-the-box.
  • Made the --without-gtk configure option work.
  • Made configure check the Gtk version number, since it requires 1.2.
  • Fixed a bug in the code that attempted to prevent changes of screen resolution while the screen is locked.
  • Fixed a race condition in xscreensaver-demo that could cause an X error at startup.
  • Added -transparent option to deluxe.
  • Added petri hack.

3.1331-May-1999
  • Ported xscreensaver-demo to Gtk.
  • Made it possible to build Motif, Gtk, and Athena versions of xscreensaver-demo in the same directory without reconfiguring.
  • Made xscreensaver-demo chase symlinks before writing the .xscreensaver file, so that if .xscreensaver is itself a symlink, the underlying file will be replaced instead.
  • Some Makefile and configure tweaks for Solaris and FreeBSD.
  • Made it possible to set the fire color in xflame.
  • Made transparency work in TrueColor (for goop and qix.)
  • Fixed a multi-head bug introduced by the virtual viewports stuff.

3.1210-May-1999
  • Made it so that you can't scroll the screen while the lock dialog is up (with XFree86 virtual viewports.)
  • Fixed a bug in flag that caused bob's chin to get cut off after a few iterations.

3.1107-May-1999
  • Made xjack be black-on-white-ish, so that it looks less like a computer screen and more like the typewritten paper it's supposed to be.
  • New version of pulsar.
  • Fixed Solaris compilation problem in phosphor.
  • Made xscreensaver notice XFree86's virtual root window hack, so that if the X server's root window is larger than the monitor's displayable resolution, the screen saver will limit itself to the area that actually appears on the screen.
  • Made the xscreensaver daemon do a better job of picking the visual class that should be used for GL programs. Less user intervention should be needed now: you can use the logical visual name GL instead of having to figure out by hand which one to use.
  • Oops, the visual was defaulting to ``best'' instead of ``default'', because the .xscreensaver file was not being loaded quite early enough.
  • Made configure figure out how to build icmp ping support into the sonar hack automatically.
  • Made warnings about not being able to read shadow passwords not be printed if compiled with PAM support.
  • Improved PAM startup diagnostics.
  • Worked around the Solaris PAM bug that was causing crashes there, so now PAM is turned on by default.
  • Made configure detect the number of arguments that pam_strerror() takes, since on Linux, this apparently changed between 2.0 and 2.2, sigh.
  • Made the /proc/interrupts kludge look for ``PS/2 Mouse'' as well as ``keyboard''.
  • Made xscreensaver notice when there has been a sudden large jump in wall-clock time, and if so, lock right away, instead of waiting for ``lockTimeout'' to expire first. (Laptops need this for safer recovery from ``hibernation.'')
  • Added -throttle option to xscreensaver-command.

3.1027-Apr-1999
  • Added phosphor, xmatrix, and pulsar hacks.
  • Fixed a bug in the color allocator that sometimes caused starfish to fall back to monochrome.
  • Reduced the amount of code that runs before root privileges are disavowed: ``normal'' and ``shadow'' passwords now do some initialization as root, but the PAM and Kerberos authorization schemes will be initialized while running as ``nobody''. Supposedly this closes a potential security hole when using Kerberos.
  • Added some more sanity checking to configure.

3.0911-Apr-1999
  • Added compass, squiral, xflame, wander, spotlight, and critical hacks.
  • Added some new modes to decayscreen.
  • Made deluxe work in monochrome.
  • Generalized usage of the Double-Buffer server extension in several hacks (compass, deluxe, interference, kumppa, and moire2.)
  • Fixed another visual-depth problem in rd-bomb.
  • The screen saver will now defer blanking if neither the keyboard nor the mouse could be grabbed. Instead, it will just try again in a few minutes. This fixes a bad interaction between xscreensaver and programs like VMware that hold the mouse and keyboard grabbed for a long time.
  • Added a new erase mode (expanding spiral.)

3.0815-Mar-1999
  • Fixed some bugs in my port of t3d.
  • Added penetrate and deluxe hacks.
  • When linking against Motif 2.x, also link against XPM.
  • Added support for using /proc/interrupts for idle detection on Linux. Now xscreensaver shouldn't kick in when the user is active on a non-X virtual console.
  • Upgraded to autoconf 2.13.

3.0704-Jan-1999
  • Configure tweaks (sometimes -lXmu wasn't getting linked in properly; check for _Xsetlocale in -lXintl.)
  • Portability fixes for sonar.c.
  • Fixed a compilation problem when you have GL but don't have XPM.
  • Made configure notice when MesaGL requires -lpthread.
  • Made flame ignore SIGFPE (not sure if this is the right fix; it seems only to be needed on FreeBSD.)
  • Kludged rd-bomb work on visuals that are of depth 24 but that *do not* support pixmaps of depth 32.
  • Fixed halo to work properly in TrueColor.
  • Changed xscreensaver.spec to install the hacks in /usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/ by default, since that's where recent Red Hat distributions put them.
  • Added t3d hack.
  • Updated versions of crystal, hopalong, and flow from xlockmore.
  • Imported demon and loop modes from xlockmore.

3.0622-Nov-1998
  • Oops, the ``default-n'' visual descriptor was broken; it was always installing a colormap if the installColormap preference was set, meaning that xearth, xv and friends were using the wrong colors on 8-bit systems.
  • Turned off HAVE_PING in sonar, since it compiles on some Linux systems, but not others of similar vintage...

3.0520-Nov-1998
  • Fixed an off-by-1 in distort.
  • Added sonar hack.
  • New version of glplanet (with stars.)
  • Made all hacks exit when you type q or ESC at them, and made them obey the WM_DELETE_WINDOW ClientMessage.
  • Fixed a nonfatal buffer overrun in lament (note: lament still doesn't work with MesaGL 3.0: it dies in lambda_textured_triangle1(), which is Mesa's bug, not mine.)

3.0416-Nov-1998
  • Added an xscreensaver.spec file, to make it easier for other folks to generate RPMs.
  • Made the password code work on HPUX in the situation where: ``enhanced security'' is available; but not used; but the user typed a password more than 8 characters long anyway. FTSOHPUX.

3.0315-Nov-1998
  • Made locking work when passwd aging is enabled.
  • Added support for PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules.) It is still turned off by default, though, since it doesn't seem to work on Solaris 2.6, and has been behaving erratically on Red Hat 5.1.
  • Made each possible authentication method be tried in turn until one succeeds; this means that Kerberos is being used, we will first check Kerberos, and if that fails, will then consult the local password file. Likewise with PAM.
  • Save and restore the bits under the passwd dialog, to avoid leaving a black rectangle behind when unlocking is cancelled.

3.0225-Oct-1998
  • Not everyone has sys/select.h, sigh...

3.0124-Oct-1998
  • Some fixes to reflect.
  • Configure tweaks.
  • Made it log unsuccessful attempts to unlock the screen to syslog.
  • Fixed a bug where xscreensaver-demo could be seeing a different programs list than xscreensaver did.

3.0020-Oct-1998
  • The xscreensaver daemon no longer links against Motif or Athena: demo-mode and the preferences panel are no longer built in to the daemon, but are now handled by an external program, xscreensaver-demo. (I decided that this, along with the recent addition of the .xscreensaver config file, justified bumping the version number to 3.00, since this is a fairly major architectural change.)
  • Lines in the *programs resource may now begin with the character ``-'', meaning ``don't run this hack.'' In this way, it's possible to disable a hack without throwing away the information about it (making it easier to change your mind later.) Eventually the preferences/demo mode GUI should represent this as a checkbox or something.
  • Fixed a short race condition where it was possible for xscreensaver to die with a BadWindow error if it was blanking the screen just as another window was being deleted.
  • Made it possible to disable specific modes in bsod.

2.3408-Oct-1998
  • Fixed a bug that was making pipes generate way too many valves. Made the viewpoint in pipes be selected randomly instead of always being -10 degrees.
  • Fixed a bug in the XSHM code, in the case where the server supports the XSHM extension but is not the same machine as the client.
  • Made rd-bomb default to taking up the whole screen.
  • Made it not try to do fading/unfading if no PseudoColor visuals exist.
  • Initial attempt at supporting VT-locking (doesn't work yet.)
  • Eliminated the captureStdout resource; now captureStderr controls both streams.
  • Added -capture-stderr and -no-capture-stderr command-line arguments.
  • Added glplanet hack.
  • When a hack is selected with xscreensaver-command -select, that hack will be used until further notice (until the saver turns off, or another activation command is issued.)

2.3305-Oct-1998
  • Made xscreensaver-command print error messages: the xscreensaver daemon now responds to ClientMessage events by writing a response message on a window property, instead of just writing to its stderr.
  • Made the ~/.xscreensaver file be automatically reloaded when the file date changes.
  • The password dialog and splash screen no longer depend on Motif or Athena. This should clear up a number of focus problems, and is the first step on the path toward moving all of the Motif/Athena/whatever code out of the xscreensaver daemon, and into external processes.
  • Don't complain about LessTif 0.86 any more, since the new password dialog makes that problem go away.
  • Configure tweaks for Irix 6.5, SunOS 5.something.
  • New -reflect option to distort.

2.3204-Oct-1998
  • Added reading and writing of a ~/.xscreensaver file, so that the Preferences panel can save its settings.
  • New version of rubik.
  • Added -select N argument to xscreensaver-command.
  • Oops, left out some of the bubbles3d files...

2.3102-Oct-1998
  • The cursor was invisible in the password dialog. Fixed.
  • Made configure warn against MesaGL 2.6.
  • Fixed X error at startup when using non-default visual.
  • New version of crystal, ant, and atlantis from xlockmore.
  • New hack, bubble3d.
  • Added some new modes to bsod.

2.3023-Sep-1998
  • Changed the order in which -lSM and -lICE are linked to be after Motif instead of before (Lesstif on Irix needs this.)

2.2923-Sep-1998
  • Work around a bash bug in configure.
  • Tweaked HPUX paths again. FTSOHPUX.
  • Made configure recommend against LessTif 0.86, due to a bug in that version that causes a security hole in the screen locking code. LessTif 0.87 will fix it.
  • Made all of the --with options to configure accept a directory option as well (so that --with-motif=/FOO will add -I/FOO/include -L/FOO/lib). I believe this is the Configure Party Line of how do to such things.
  • Fixed a bug where the mouse was left un-grabbed after the first time the graphics hack was changed (simplified all of the mouse-grabbing logic.)
  • Maybe possibly perhaps made vidwhacker really not leave stray xv windows around. This time for sure.
  • Added a new erase mode (random dots fizzling out.)
  • Added -prefs argument to xscreensaver-command, that brings up the Preferences dialog directly (it seems that nobody ever noticed the Preferences button on the Demo Mode dialog, maybe this will help.)
  • Added a splash screen. Turn it off with *splash:false.

2.2821-Sep-1998
  • Better macsbug text in bsod.
  • New version of distort with many new modes.
  • Plugged a leak in coral.
  • Tweaked configure for HPUX.
  • Removed some compiler warnings.
  • More consistent usage of stderr versus stdout.
  • More diagnostics should an X error occur.
  • Fixed a possible crash in SGI-specific unfading code.

2.2704-Aug-1998
  • Improved version of distort.
  • Made lament compile against OpenGL 1.0 (though it still requires 1.1 to work properly.)
  • Updated my email address and home page.

2.2525-Jul-1998
  • Improved motion in rd-bomb.
  • Added XSHM (shared memory extension) support to the distort, interference, moire, rd-bomb, and swirl hacks, which speeds them up a bit.
  • Added lament hack.

2.2430-Jun-1998
  • Tweaked the order of the -L options again.
  • Cleaned up configure's --help message.
  • Added kumppa hack.
  • Smarter maze-solving algorithm in maze.
  • Took xlyap out of the default list of hacks, since it's just incredibly buggy (and slow.) Maybe someday someone will fix it...
  • Added distort hack, but didn't add it to the default list (yet) because it's still too slow.
  • Made the Athena demo dialog look more like the Motif version; it has a text-entry field now, too.
  • Made the Athena password dialog echo asterisks, like Motif does, instead of using a flyspeck font.
  • Some random configure tweaks.
  • Added a timestamp resource that makes the -verbose messages include the time at which they were printed.

2.2321-Jun-1998
  • The fix for SGI's ``scheme'' nonsense broke things, and let the user's ``*background'' resource show through. Fixed it in a different way.

2.2221-Jun-1998
  • Added support for the DPMS server extension (Display Power Management System.)
  • Made configure advertize the --enable-subdir option a little more, since that seemed to cause some people stress. Also, made that directory be built into the xscreensaver executable, as a hardcoded prefix to $PATH. (Might help, shouldn't hurt.)
  • Made configure prefer the two-arg gettimeofday to the one-arg version, since AIX doesn't have any prototypes.
  • Made it work with Xaw3d (the 3D Athena library.)
  • Made make install create directories as necessary.
  • New version of lmorph from Sverre.
  • Added crystal and discreet hacks from xlockmore.
  • Added a new mode to bsod.

2.2115-Jun-1998
  • Made xscreensaver-command -time use different words. (It now describes the two states as ``screen blanked since...'' and ``screen non-blanked since...'' instead of ``active since...'' and ``inactive since...'' which a lot of people interpreted as meaning the opposite of what was intended.)
  • Improved some error messages, in the hopes of making the distinction between the xscreensaver and xscreensaver-command programs more obvious.
  • Rewrote (and reorganized) parts of the xscreensaver and xscreensaver-command manual pages.
  • Renamed xscreensaver's -lock command-line option to be -lock-mode, to avoid confusion with the -lock option to xscreensaver-command, which does a totally different thing.
  • Removed xscreensaver's -demo command-line option for a similar reason; use xscreensaver-command -demo instead.
  • Disabled SGI's ``scheme'' nonsense in a better way than fully-qualifying the background colors in every single hack.
  • Fixed some other minor cosmetic problems when *sgiMode is turned on.
  • Fixed an X error in bsod -root (how ironic...)

2.2010-Jun-1998
  • Fixed a bug that caused the mouse to sometimes not be grabbed properly (meaning the window manager menu could pop up over the demo-mode display.)
  • Fixed a bug that made the stderr output sometimes get printed twice.
  • Fixed a bug that made the demo-mode scrollbar move too fast.
  • Protected against a possible buffer overflow.
  • Made vidwhacker not leave stray xv windows around.
  • New version of ant so that Bagley doesn't calve.
  • Make configure on AIX get XShm from the right library.

2.1904-Jun-1998
  • One file was missing from the tar file. Fixed.

2.1804-Jun-1998
  • Oops, atlantis wasn't being built by default. Fixed.
  • Added epicycle hack.
  • Added interference hack.
  • Added truchet hack.
  • Added bsod hack.
  • Added some new modes to vidwhacker.

2.1702-Jun-1998
  • Added a -window-id argument to most hacks, so that they can draw on arbitrary externally-provided windows.
  • Synched with xlockmore 4.11a01.
  • Added flow hack.
  • Added atlantis GL hack.
  • Renamed puzzle hack to jigsaw, since xlock already had a different mode called puzzle.
  • Made it self-configure properly when Motif 2.1.0 is being used (requires -lXp now, sigh...)

2.1621-Feb-1998
  • Made flag able to do XPM images.
  • New look for the xscreensaver logo (xroger).
  • Fixed compilation error on Suns with adjunct passwords.
  • Got multi-architecture builds working again.
  • Some configure tweaks for building on HPUX and Solaris.
  • Fixed bug in decayscreen.
  • Fixed typo in passwd.c.
  • Made cynosure not die when colormap is full.

2.1518-Jan-1998
  • Added cynosure hack.
  • Added moire2 hack.
  • Tweaked erase.c some more.
  • Made unfading a bit smoother.
  • Added vidwhacker hack (not installed by default.)
  • Added stairs hack.
  • Split escher into cage and moebius, as per xlockmore.
  • Changed subprocess handling to use sigaction() instead of signal() if it's available (this is necessary for SCO but should work fine on other systems too.)
  • Various other tweaks.

2.1421-Dec-1997
  • Better fix for the Motif drag-and-die lossage.
  • Put in some kludges to work around a LessTif bug.
  • XScreenSaver is known to work with LessTif 0.82 now.
  • Made fading work on high-end SGI video hardware.
  • Fixed another SGI-specific bug in screen grabbing; will the madness never cease?
  • Fixed another crash in xlyap.

2.1303-Dec-1997
  • Made decayscreen do directions other than down.
  • Improved puzzle.
  • Fixed a crash in xlyap.
  • Added CDE info to the man page, removed cde.txt.
  • Configure tweaks for Zippy.
  • Turned off the signal handling in bubbles because it was sometimes failing to die.
  • Added hacks/xscreensaver-sgigl.c to make it possible to run SGI's ElectroPaint hack (/usr/demos/bin/ep) with xscreensaver. Finally!
  • Fixed a buffer overrun in the locking code that some wily, malicious cracker must have slipped in.
  • Disabled Motif drag-and-drool in the dialog box buttons, since it's broken in some old versions of Motif.

2.1225-Nov-1997
  • Added README.debugging.
  • Added puzzle hack.
  • Added xlyap hack.
  • Added default-n as a visual name, so that one can have -install on by default, but turn it off for certain poorly-behaved hacks (like xv.)
  • Added support for grabbing frames of external video (on SGI) to the screen-grabbing hacks (decayscreen, slidescreen, slip, blitspin, and puzzle.)
  • Improved look of tiles in slidescreen; fixed its color allocation problem.

2.1117-Nov-1997
  • Tweaked blitspin, added it to the default list.
  • Added lissie, mountain, triangle, worm, rotor, and ant from xlockmore.
  • Updated sierpinski, galaxy, and lisa.
  • Thickened the lines in braid and lmorph.
  • Updated VMS makefiles.
  • Renamed fract to vines.
  • Added xjack hack.
  • Made a few more hacks use erase.c, and added a few more wipe styles.
  • Fixed compilation problem with Sun's version of OpenGL.
  • Added ability to use sigaction() instead of signal() to work around a SCO kernel bug.

2.1018-Oct-1997
  • Fixed colormap bugs in rd-bomb; sped up coral.
  • Configure tweaks for *BSD.

2.0807-Oct-1997
  • New hacks rd-bomb and coral.
  • New version of maze with some new algorithms.
  • New colorized version of rocks.
  • Fixed a bug in qix on 64-bit machines.
  • Fixed a bug in the -time option.
  • Fixed a bug in configure related to LessTif.

2.0704-Aug-1997
  • Minor header tweaks in windows.c and flag.c.
  • Made multi-architecture ($VPATH) builds work properly.
  • Merged new GL stuff from xlockmore (rubik, morph3d.)
  • Fixed intermittent crashes in imsmap and munch.
  • Added fadeplot hack from xlockmore.

2.0626-Jul-1997
  • Merged in VMS support from Patrick Moreau.

2.0507-Jul-1997
  • Fixed a MIT-SCREEN-SAVER-related crash, and tweaked configure to detect the extra-random -Xss library.

2.0429-Jun-1997
  • HP configure tweaks. Detect and warn about LessTif.
  • Fixed low-color behavior of goop, pyro, starfish, greynetic, flame, halo, and moire.

2.0325-Jun-1997
  • Fixed flicker in pipes. Fixed 3d in bouboule.
  • Added munch hack.
  • Added basic dependencies to the Makefile.in files.

2.0220-Jun-1997
  • Fixes for compiling with the MIT saver extension.
  • Made the yow/fortune program be a configure option.
  • Various configure tweaks.

2.0116-Jun-1997
  • Added goop and starfish hacks.
  • Added colomap cycling to halo.
  • Made attraction use the new colormap allocator.
  • Added better $PATH diagnostics.
  • There was a bug in frand! Color selection should be much improved now.

2.0010-Jun-1997
  • Converted to use configure instead of imake.
  • ANSI C is now required.
  • Added Kerberos locking support, from Nat Lanza.
  • Made the stderr text use overlay planes, if possible.
  • Reworked the xlockmore compatibility stuff again.
  • Added gears, superquadrics, escher, pipes, and sproingies hacks (depend on OpenGL.)

1.3431-May-1997
  • Fixed some bugs, made fading be a little smoother.

1.3331-May-1997
  • Made it work with multi-headed displays.
  • Generalized sub-process management (Unix sucks!)
  • Added interactive mouse frobbing to Julia.
  • Added (untested) support for HPUX shadow passwords.
  • Made normal non-shadow passwords be checked if the shadow passwords aren't accessible for some reason.

1.3227-May-1997
  • Removed *colorPrograms and *monoPrograms resources: made it possible to specify the desired visual on a per-hack basis.
  • Cleaned up / restructured the driver: no more globals.
  • Made the Motif and Athena dialogs share more code.
  • Probably fixed some Athena colormap-installation bugs.
  • Fixed screen grabbing (cmap) on SGI 12-bit PseudoColor.
  • Fixed divide-by-zero in bright random colormaps.
  • Added an improved version of xlock's flag hack.
  • Made unfading work better, and not flicker on SGIs.
  • Added sphere, forest, lisa hacks from xlockmore.
  • Added (untested) support for SunOS Adjunct passwords.

1.3118-May-1997
  • Improved colors and colormap cycling of many hacks.
  • Cleaned up xlockmore compatibility layer.
  • Made blitspin able to grab an image off the screen.
  • Ported swirl and bouboule hacks from xlockmore.
  • Made the driver more careful about not leaving bits on the screen, or allowing other windows to raise themselves: it now re-blanks the screen every so often.
  • Added -time option to xscreensaver-command.
  • Improved SGI screen-grabbing some more: now it can grab TrueColor screens into PseudoColor windows and have the colors still come out semi-reasonably.

1.3014-May-1997
  • Made slidescreen and decayscreen work better on SGIs when windows of different visuals are present, by using the XReadDisplay() extension to get a true 24-bit image out of the frame buffer.
  • Made noseguy be in color, if compiled with XPM.
  • Ported braid, drift, fract, galaxy, grav, ifs, julia, laser, lightning, penrose, sierpinski, slip, spiral, and strange hacks from xlockmore.
  • Merged hopalong hack with a more recent version.
  • Added cde.txt.

1.2828-Apr-1997
  • Added deco, moire, and kaleidescope hacks.
  • Merged in support for non-Motif locking and demo mode.
  • Made blitspin and bubbles work in TrueColor.
  • Fixed a stupid bug I introduced in imsmap.
  • Added poly and gravity options to qix.

1.2708-Jan-1997
  • Added support for SGI SCREEN_SAVER extension.
  • Made fade and unfade work on 8-bit SGIs.
  • Made the dialog boxes more Motify.
  • Added bubbles hack.

1.2618-Dec-1995
  • Added lmorph hack.
  • Added viscosity and mouse-control to attraction.
  • Fixed possible bad color choices in qix and attraction.
  • Added ramp-mode to halo.
  • Added a new RNG, which is faster and more portable than using the RNG in libc.
  • Made locking work on SCO.
  • Various other minor tweaks that I don't remember.

1.2512-Jan-1995
  • Made it capture the stdout/stderr of its subprocesses and present them on the screensaver window itself.
  • Made demo mode work correctly with non-default visuals and color maps, instead of always using the defaults.
  • Added -visual argument to all included screenhacks.
  • Support for the R6 MIT-SCREEN-SAVER server extension.
  • Made the demo mode list scroll properly.
  • Added pedal hack.

1.2405-Jan-1995
  • Fixed some private-colormap oddities in slidescreen, decayscreen, and xroger. Fixed apparent conservation- of-mass problem in pyro; made the shrapnel round.

1.2308-Nov-1994
  • Minor tweaks for IRIX5; fixed locking race condition.

1.2227-May-1994
  • Minor tweaks for X11R6.
  • Fixes for non-default visuals.

1.2128-Nov-1993
  • Fixed bug in color blitspin; added default image.
  • Added diagnostics to noseguy. Fixed off-by-one error in flame. Added some missing casts.

1.1927-Oct-1993
  • Added flame hack.
  • Fixed a minor Motif dialog text field bug.
  • Fixed yet another XPointer-not-defined-in-R4 bug.

1.18some time in 1993
  • Added support for shadow password files.
  • Fixed some Motif-related locking bugs.
  • Added diagnostics when locking is disabled.
  • Made blitspin able to use the XPM library.
  • Added decayscreen hack.

1.17some time in 1993
  • Added halo hack.

1.16some time in 1993
  • Portability fixes.

1.15some time in 1993
  • Broke the driver up into more source files.
  • Moved the hacks into their own directory.
  • Made all time parameters accept the 00:00:00 syntax, so that even the parameters which are normally read as minutes can be specified in seconds.
  • Added colormap cycling to imsmap.
  • Made hyper work with K&R compilers.

1.14some time in 1992
  • Added orbit option to attraction hack.
  • Added lock-timeout option.
  • Cleaned up options of maze hack.

1.09some time in 1992
  • Added demo mode, and locking.
  • Added maze hack.
  • Added norotate option to rocks hack.

1.0530-Nov-1992
  • Works when run from XDM before anyone logs in.
  • Sped up imsmap.
  • Can use xv as a slideshow without using up colormap entries while the screen is not blanked.
  • Fixed a BadDrawable error in non-XIdle mode.
  • Added blitspin and imsmap.

1.01early 1992
  • Current list of included hacks is now: qix, helix, rorschach, attraction, greynetic, rocks, pyro, hopalong, and noseguy.

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