like yeah they haven't fulfilled their original purpose of allowing you to keep a CRT warmed up without burning in an image in about two decades but it annoyed me that we went from "computers are Contraptions that do Whimsical Things like dinging and playing back animated GIFs and making a whole lot of clatter to remember a few megabytes of information" to "everything with a CPU in it is a Device and it must look flat and abstract and be able to turn on and off instantly and anything fun it might do is a waste of power so by the way we pumped it full of ads and subscriptions"
idk about Linux but I know Windows basically killed screensavers but macOS still has a "culture" of screensavers and it rules:
- just last year, in macOS 14 Sonoma they introduced those "wallpaper+screensavers" combo that animate when the screen is locked and morph back into a wallpaper when you unlock. It's delightful. video
- the next version of macOS is already goated IMO because there's a screensaver/wallpaper combo that's entirely programmatic paying an hommage to classic Mac OS source
Also also if you want more cool screensavers, the xscreensaver (Linux/macOS only) collection has some great ones, including reproduction of classic Windows screensavers Microsoft cannot be bothered to include anymore.
what the fuck are you talking about?
The same .SCR files from After Dark circa 1991 still works on your Windows 11 machine! You can still make screen savers! Sure screensavers are off by default in windows, because again their purpose has been diminished with recent technology, but no one took anything from you. All you have to do is type "Screen Saver" into your windows start search and it pops up.