Today ended the poll on forums.kde.org about the future of X Screen saver support in the KDE Plasma Workspaces. I want to thank everybody who participated in the poll. The poll and the thread clearly help us to see what the users need and want and what we need to provide.

Here are the results:

153 (53.5 %): I don’t use screen savers, it doesn’t affect me

92 (32.2 %): Finally new screen savers, thanks a lot

22 (7.7 %): I would miss them but could live without them

4 (1.4 %): I would complain

2 (0.7 %): I would switch to another Desktop Environment

13 (4.5 %): I don’t care

Of course the poll does not reflect the diversity of our users. We are not able to reach the Pennys out there who do not even know that they use the KDE Plasma Workspaces. But I am personally convinced that the Pennys do not use screen savers as we do not enable or even install screen savers by default and make it non trivial to configure them.

We always try to develop the software so that most users are suited well. The poll result shows that only a minority really wants the old screen savers, but that one third of our community is eager to get new and modern screen savers. But even more important is that more than half of our user base will benefit from the work on the new screen locker directly.

This confirms the plan we have to improve the screen locker for 4.8 and that keeping the screen savers as a fallback is an acceptable solution for 4.8. Given the results I will also look into getting the new screen savers ready for 4.8 and not only for 4.9.

Again thanks to everybody who participated in the poll to make the KDE workspaces better.