I just installed Linux Mint on my kitchen computer and was surprised to find there was no screensaver software installed automatically. Why is that? Eventually I found xscreensaver in the repositories and have that running. Is it the best screensaver available or should I try something better? I like to have a rolling photo display on this computer. Thank you for your suggestions.

Which "Linux Mint" distribution exactly?
Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, or Xfce?

As far as I am concerned, xscreensaver is the best option available on Linux.

When I install something with gnome-screensaver or kscreensaver or a variant thereof (mate-screensaver, for example, is a variant of gnome-screensaver), I routinely uninstall them and install xscreensaver.

Edit:

The screensaver settings were likely in your control center application; if there is not a separate setting for "screensaver," it might be under "display." Linux screensavers rarely appear directly in the top menu.

Sorry, I did not mention that I was using Cinnamon. Xscreensaver is working very well, but did take some time to configure properly to let the photos to display properly. The photos are stored on an external hard drive. I am surprised that there is not a screensaver in the control center application. Most casual users like me would find that as important as changing the wallpaper and wallpaper gets lots of attention.

Thank you for your responses and help.

If it is important to you, you might try contacting the Mint developers as this was a conscious decision on their part. The Mint sub-forum at LQ is simply volunteers trying to help people with problems and we have no control over developer decisions.

http://www.linuxmint.com/contactus.php

For what it's worth, my Mint 17 MATE came with the mate-screensaver out-of-the-box.

According to this link, Mint Cinnamon also included a screensaver. It's referenced about half-way down the page.

I had wonered whether they stopped including screen savers since very few people have screens which need saving nowadays.

Although, as I understand it, our modern flat panel screens will not suffer "burn in" like the old CRT monitors I believe a lot of people still use screen savers simply for entertainment value. Because of this trend I feel that the whole idea of a screen saver should be rethought. Instead of software to display pointless graphics, perhaps the software could entertain with such options as travel photos with location info, trending news, twitter feeds, jokes, stock market info, Printerest interests, or other such goodies. It could be a Renaissance of in an old area of software.

I think for some operating systems you can get or make screensavers that do all those things. Under Linux I know an old colleague scripted something to grab RSS feeds and dump them in a file for his screensaver to display, for example.