Xscreensaver Electric Sheep Thank You, Pat

I have noticed that, on many distros, Xscreensaver does not include Electric Sheep, which is a graphically beautiful project.

I was on my Mageia box today and decided to look at how to get Electric Sheep to work on it. When I went to the website, I found that Electric Sheep is currently available for Linux (and some other OSs) only in sources. Having other things to do, I did not attempt to install it in Mageia this afternoon.

But I am pleased that is in Xscreensaver on Slackware.

I express my gratitude.

As far as I know, Slackware is the ONLY distro that includes Electric Sheep. It's not even in the Gentoo or Arch repos.

It's a small part of what makes Slackware Unique®

Not only that, but Pat is one of the only distributors who makes an exception to the usual "security and stability updates only" rule for patches for point releases and keeps xscreensaver up to date per jwz's express wishes.

electricsheep is amazing

Another superb screensaver, similar to electricsheep, is rss-glx (euphoria, especially), available at SBo, but I get the following error on 14.2:

(xscreensaver-demo:2843): libglade-WARNING **: Could not load support for `gnome': libgnome.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Gnome? I installed using sboinstall, which, I believe, installs dependencies, even though libgnome is not listed as a dependency.

Originally Posted by JWJones As far as I know, Slackware is the ONLY distro that includes Electric Sheep. It's not even in the Gentoo or Arch repos.

It took some convincing to get it added ;-)
That was also the moment that the MPlayer was introduced - in Slackware 13.0:

+--------------------------+
Tue May 19 15:36:49 CDT 2009
xap/MPlayer-r29301-i486-1.txz:  Added MPlayer-r29301.  This is shipped without
  DeCSS support (binary or source), and with patent-encumbered encoders
  disabled, but it's still very capable of media playback.
  Thanks to Eric Hameleers for the build script and encouragement.
xap/electricsheep-20090306-i486-1.txz:  Added electricsheep-20090306,
  a distributed screensaver.  This requires MPlayer.
  Thanks to Eric Hameleers.
xap/xscreensaver-5.08-i486-2.txz:  Patched to support electricsheep.
  Thanks to Eric Hameleers.

Thanks, Alien Bob. I think you can see that your efforts are appreciated.

Just for grins and giggles, as my old boss used to say, here's screenshot of Electric Sheep on Slackware 14.2.

http://pineviewfarm.net/weblog/wp-co..._sheep_500.jpg

I took it by telling Ksnapshot to take a screenshot in [mumble] seconds and then putting xscreensaver in preview mode, then I cropped it down in the GIMP. My monitor is 16:9, but Electric Sheep seems to default to 4:3 on the desktop.

Originally Posted by frankbell Just for grins and giggles, as my old boss used to say, here's screenshot of Electric Sheep on Slackware 14.2. http://pineviewfarm.net/weblog/wp-co..._sheep_500.jpg I took it by telling Ksnapshot to take a screenshot in [mumble] seconds and then putting xscreensaver in preview mode, then I cropped it down in the GIMP. My monitor is 16:9, but Electric Sheep seems to default to 4:3 on the desktop.

This was not the case before and the 4:3 aspect ratio is something that appeared between Slackware 14.1 and 14.2. This was my workaround of the issue:
https://slackalaxy.com/2015/08/07/scaled-electricsheep/

Originally Posted by frankbell My monitor is 16:9, but Electric Sheep seems to default to 4:3 on the desktop.

I believe that 4:3 is the native resolution of the free 'sheep', looks like $20 per year will get you some 'gold' sheep that natively come in 16:9. I have not paid and tried but I confess that I am tempted. Maybe a shirt as well

I remember using that years ago on Windows. Personally, I don't have any use for a screensaver anymore. Just give me a simple screen locker and turn off the screen after a minute or two, but I will admit that electric sheep makes some pretty cool animations.

Originally Posted by solarfields This was not the case before and the 4:3 aspect ratio is something that appeared between Slackware 14.1 and 14.2. This was my workaround of the issue: https://slackalaxy.com/2015/08/07/scaled-electricsheep/

Thanks, this fixes the scaling. It seems to be very blurry though. Is there a way to get a sharper image?

Originally Posted by montagdude I remember using that years ago on Windows. Personally, I don't have any use for a screensaver anymore. Just give me a simple screen locker and turn off the screen after a minute or two, but I will admit that electric sheep makes some pretty cool animations.

Are there practical uses for screensavers anymore? These days I just have xscreensaver choose one at random, I quite like some of the '90s retro ones.

Thanks, this fixes the scaling. It seems to be very blurry though. Is there a way to get a sharper image?

blurry? Do you mean low resolution? I think you cannot change the resolution quality.