Saving one screen at a time – Tedium

Having seen a lot of pipes, wavy lines, and flying toasters in my day, there was a real novelty to the art of screen savers, which became another way to put your visual mark on the devices you own. The animated screen saver is still out there, of course, but its cultural relevance has faded considerably. In fact, GNOME, one of the two dominant window managers in the FOSS world (particularly on Linux), straight-up doesn’t support graphical screen savers in modern versions, unless you’re willing to get hacky. And it’s not like people kick up colorful screen savers on their smartphones or tablets. But maybe we’re thinking about screen savers all wrong in terms of their cultural role. When it comes to screen savers, what if GNOME has it right? Today’s Tedium ponders the screen saver, including how we got it and what it represents today.