Comment 9 for bug 554069

Revision history for this message
Harald Sitter (apachelogger) wrote : Re: xscreensaver activated on kubuntu after upgrade to lucid

Cody, that is confusing. First you say that we shall revert and fix the real issue and then you describe the real issue as "that xscreensaver gets installed for whatever reason on Kubuntu upgrade from Karmic to Lucid."

Unless I am confusing things here, then the autostart was only introduced in October and removed less than half a year later (January or Februar, cant remember) because it apparently was disliked by a large enough portion of Debian users to justify partially reverting this autostart addition (in the sense that it was moved to opt-in). So clearly XFCE and "systems that don't use gnome-screensaver or kde's screensaver, and rely on xscreensaver" had a system in place to start the xscreensaver LONG before this autostart desktop file was added.

So the fix to the real issue, you demand, is the very same that you want reverted, since the problem only arose since Debian added that desktop file in October.

And here is my most personal view on the autostart business altogether. The wm/desktop environment should decide, and if the wm/desktop enviornment does not, then the user must do it for themselves. At no rate should we "enforce by assumption" that a KDE users will use kscreesnaver, or that a GNOME user will use gnome-screensaver, and that a XFCE user uses xscreensaver. Let alone systems where you find a mixture of them, what should be the preferred action then? Start all of them? Start screensaver X unless desktop file processing component A is in notshowin? What if app B invokes a desktop file processing component C that is not listed in notshowin, will it start screensaver Y? What if I dont want screensavers at all, but some silly metapackage depends on either?
From my POV opt-in is the only sane approach, whereas desktop's or default installations might make assumptions about what the user might want to use, they should be opt-out. So a user might opt-out of kscreensaver and opt-in xscreensaver. Good fun with that if the desktop file contains a NotShowIn=KDE; and an update via -updates lands!